ARTH Vjfc- MASON 
■ . WILL! 



ILLIMYM^FIE 




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&pyrigtitN°-_ 



CQEHRIGKT DEPOSIT. 



OCEAN ECHOES 



THE FLYING BOSUN 

A MYSTERY OF THE SEA 
BY 

Arthur Mason 



New York Post's Literary Review: "It is 
no imaginary picture. . . . As a story of the 
sea it ranks with the best of Jack London or 
Morgan Robertson, and as a story of the 
uncanny it is comparable with 'Dracula' and 
'The Master of Ballantrae.' " 

New York Tribune: "A true-blue deep- 
water story ... a thing of horror, death 
and mystery." 

New York Times: "Both in theme and 
handling it betrays a close cousinship to the 
vivid romances of Morgan Robertson." 

Boston Herald: "No lack of exciting action 
— much of it the sort that is built around the 
sailor's superstitions." 

The Bookman: "The feeling persists that, 
with the exception of the spiritual phe- 
nomena, the whole dramatic voyage actually 
occurred." 

$1.75 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 

STEW YORK 



Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2011 with funding from 
The Library of Congress 



http://www.archive.org/details/oceanechoesautobOOmaso 




The Call of the Sea Had Me Again. 



OCEAN ECHOES 



AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 



BY 

ARTHUR MASON 

With an Introduction by 
WILLIAM McFEE 




NEW YORK 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 

1922 






COPTKIOHT, 1922, 

BY 
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 

First printing, August, 1922 



PftrmneB rs the tr. 8. a» 



AUG 26 1922 

©CI. A 681524 



TO 

G. W. M. 
WHOSE MIDSHIP SPOKE IS EVER 
READY TO TACK OR WEAR TO ANY 
BIT OF BREEZE FROM NOWHERE 



PREFACE 

I have been asked to write my biography. 
Other people have written of their lives, lives 
of greater value to the world than mine ; though 
possibly mine, too, has not been without value 
in some little ways. Lives have been written 
so interesting in the telling, that skeptical 
readers have condemned them as adorned. 

My story is, I believe, not lacking in excite- 
ment, but it shall be told simply, and as swiftly 
and truly as though the years were crossing the 
paper — crowding, as they have crowded my 
youth away, and the desire for adventure. 

There may be glued leaves in the volume of 
my life, but I shall steam them apart, trying 
to piece out a pattern that is not as much 
smudged as the background would lead one to 
believe. 

There will be in the pattern success and 
failure; heart-cheer and heart-break, as in all 
our lives — such philosophy, too, as would result 
from the thinking my life has led me to do. But 



vi PREFACE 

that there is love to the very end, and will be, 
as long as I live, speaks not so well for me (for 
if ever anyone knows the rough-and-tumble of 
life I should know it) as it does for human 
nature. 

Surely I may claim to know people, the good 
of them and the bad ; yet I think loving thoughts, 
and incline to loving deeds, and I do believe 
that good is uppermost, and will remain upper- 
most to the last. 

Arthur Mason. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

Preface v 

Introduction by William McFee .... ix 
I. Concerning Who's Who and Why — Things 

My Motner Taught Me 3 

II. An Event Which Makes My Hand Shake as 

I Write— Hounded 10 

III. I Conquer My Enemy — Irish Anne — The 

Bandmaster 16 

IV. I Leave My Mother — The Sea Claims Me — 

My Little Dogs Must' Hunt Alone ... 23 
V. My First Voyage With the Swede — Ex- 
perience 28 

VI. Back to Glasgow — A Livelier Chapter — The 

Gingerbread Battle 34 

VII. The Real Thing at Last— The Ginger . . 42 
VIII. Jack Proves His Mettle — The Pierhead Jump 

— The Sunken Canoe 51 

IX. Buttermilk, Bunkhouse and Bugaboo . . 57 
X. Liverpool Jack Goes Off on His Own — Steel 

Bridges and a Water-Logged Ship for Me 63 
XL The Lime-Juicer, Always Something New . 75 
XII. The Hens, the Cook, the Storm, and the 

Fight 82 

XIII. Better Weather, Liverpool Jack Again, I 

Go Ashore 89 

XIV. Benefit of Clergv— New Style 101 

XV. More Trouble— The Hog Business ... 113 

XVI. The Loyal Legion Button, Baled Hay, and 

Jackass Brandy 126 

XVII. The Fates Grind the Captain, and Smile and 

Mock at Me 135 

XVIII. Tops and Bottoms — The Gambler and the 

Gambler's Prey 146 



vn 



Vlll 



CONTENTS 



OHAPTEB PAGE 

XIX. A Short Chapter, Healed Wounds, and a 

Queer Sea Captain 155 

XX. The Hare-Lipped Captain — Worcestershire 

Sauce and Gruel 163 

XXI. Salmon Fishing, Citizen and Mate . . . 173 
XXII. Chapter One on the Psychology of Cap- 
tains 184 

XXIII. More Psychology — And Some Action . . 192 
XXIV! Some Facts About Women, Bed-Haired 
and Otherwise, With a Word About 
Wives and a Peaceful Conclusion in the 

Pick and the Gold-Pan 199 

XXV. The Story of the Return of Lida and of 

Two Strange Men 206 

XXVI. Concerning the Last of the New and the 
Old-New Town of Lida; of Dutchy and 
the Woman and the Stranger and Leav- 
ing Things Almost as They Were in the 

Sixties — A Shake-Down 215 

XXVII. Ways and Means— The Noble Art of Sales- 
manship, With Some House-to-House 

Philosophy 227 

XXVIII. Farewell to an Old Friend of the Early 
Days — And Au Revoir to the First, and 
Only Friend of All the Years — Rather a 
Sad Chapter Take It All in All . . 231 
XXIX. The Old Man and the Violet Rock, the 
Guardians and the Story of the Old 

Man's Love 237 

XXX. Treats of Fair Play, in Which I Lose One 
Horse, and of Justice, in Which I Lose 
Another; and of Pity, and My Acquisi- 
tion of a Third 257 

XXXI. Killing Mexican Bandits 262 

XXXII. One Who Sang 266 

XXXIII. Old Austen Sees Daylight, I Do, Too, and 

She Does, Too 270 

XXXIV. Far-Reaching Consequences 279 

XXXV. Ocean Echoes 283 



INTRODUCTION 

In this autobiography the reader is confronted 
with a situation sufficiently novel to invite more 
than a moment's consideration. Here is a man 
who may be described as a true romantic. At 
the end of a life devoted to wanderings which 
took him nowhere and adventures which have 
gotten him neither fame nor wealth, he sits down 
to write, convinced that nothing like this had 
ever happened to a man before. 

"And so I yarn along," he says, "and think of 
past things, and write them down, partly as a 
sailor who knew all that was hard and rough, and 
partly as a man recently come to writing who is 
intoxicated with the new-found use of words to 
evoke old scenes." 

Here is the secret source of his magic. Like 
the gentleman in the play who finds he has been 
speaking prose all his life, our author has sud- 
denly perceived that he has been doing the 
romantic things men write of in books, and 
the exquisite emotions attendant upon the dis- 

ix 



x INTRODUCTION 

covery have had a distinct influence upon his 
diction. There is an elvish irresponsibility in his 
narrative that only an Irish sailor could accom- 
plish without foundering. In the early part of 
the book, indeed, he is continually bewildered 
by the sharp differences between himself and the 
conventional Irishman of whom he has heard and 
read. Yet he perseveres courageously, and soon 
the stage Irishman is forgotten in the contempla- 
tion of his own matchless personality. He is one 
of those picturesque beings who erupt from the 
calm surface of literature at long intervals, 
articulate romantics, like Trelawney with his 
"Memoirs of a Younger Son," Broome whose 
"Log of a Eolling Stone" is already forgotten, 
and even Adam Lindsay Gordon, the Byronic 
rebel who found solace for his indignant spirit in 
galloping about the Australian bush. For it 
should be borne in mind that these romantics are 
sharply contrasted in mentality with men of 
the type of Vambery, passionately wandering 
through Central Asia slaking his thirst for lan- 
guages and the ultimate roots of human speech; 
of Burton, the trained traveler who held in con- 
tempt the people of his own time and race; of 



INTRODUCTION xi 

Speke, the authentic explorer, consumed with a 
hard, practical rage for annexation, standing 
with cool insolence before kings, and berating 
savage despots like children. All these men, in 
their various ways, were equipped to do their 
work, as were those more essential builders of 
empires, Rhodes, Clive and Gordon. They were 
the masters of their fates in so far as determining 
their direction could achieve this. They were 
leaders, and perhaps the most distinctive charac- 
teristic of such men in their intercourse with 
others is their utter inability to permit anyone 
else to take the lead, no matter how trivial the 
enterprise. 

But the true romantic has no such urge to 
assume the purple buskins of leadership. There 
is nothing in him of the old conquistador breed, 
those men who landed upon terrifying coasts, 
and seem to have had a demon within them, so 
astounding are the feats of endurance recorded 
of them. The true romantic wanders as does the 
gypsy? as did Borrow, but not always with Bor- 
row's command of observed incident and knowl- 
edge of the human heart. The true romantic is 
a Peer Gynt, Emperor of Himself, lord of the 



xii INTRODUCTION 

illimitable lost empire of Egomania, condemned 
to wander in a world of astute swindlers, shrewd 
executives and a sentimental proletariat. He 
sees himself always the clear-eyed victim of ras- 
cally circumstances, and broods upon the bizarre 
destiny which condemns him to be forever on the 
move. Yet of all things he dreads stagnation. 
The gently shining placidity of bourgeois exist- 
ence lures him while he struggles desperately to 
ship once more. He grows pensive as the years 
pass and find him without hearth and home, out- 
ward bound to distant ports where dwell the 
girls enshrined in the glamour of youthful 
voyages. He runs away from his ship, and 
crosses deserts and inland plains in eager hurry 
to reach a ship. In the streets of heartless cities 
he sees with luminous clarity the tufted palms 
waving in the night wind while the riding lights 
in the harbour twinkle and the guitars twang to 
soft voices. And you will discover him on any 
South American water-front, planning a return 
to some country from which he will immediately 
depart. 

The valuable feature of this book of Adven- 



INTRODUCTION xiii 

tures is the expression of this mood of the true 
romantic. Listen to him as he recounts his 
vicissitudes ashore: 

"It was time to commence to build castles, for 
six months more would give us substantial 
money. My castle took the form of a cozy little 
farm, and included a cozy little wife, too, for 
I was becoming enamoured of a red-haired lassie 
whose father raised strawberries. She liked me 
in spite of my clothes and the way I had of 
talking to my pigs. . . . 

"Nevertheless, I kissed her one day through 
the fence — a barbed wire fence at that — and a 
thrill went through me ; the like of which I had 
never known before. I began to long for the* 
complementary companionship of her, and I 
thought of her sharing my days, and bringing 
my lunch to me at the plow. 

"How full of nothingness are dreams! They 
are but fading specters on a wasteless sea — the 
closer you sail to them the farther they are away. 
Two days after my kiss, the hog farm was in 
mourning. Every last one of the hogs died from 
hog cholera." 



xiv INTRODUCTION 

Here, then, you have the essential value of 
this extraordinary narrative. It is the work of a 
true romantic, oblivious of the tremendous issues 
of civilization and race. And yarning along, as 
he says, a man "recently come to writing, who is 
intoxicated with the new-found use of words to 
evoke old scenes." This is a valuable confession. 
It is the key to a small yet inimitable department 
of literature. It is the peep-hole through which 
we see something very astonishing indeed — an 
authentic character out of some fabulous novel 
shouldering the ghostly author aside, and writing 
the tale himself. 

William McFbb. 
S. S. Carrillo 



OCEAN ECHOES 



CHAPTER I 

Concerning Who's Who and Why — Things 
My Mother Taught Me 

ONE often wonders whether the desire to 
wander is not something more than 
the fidgeting of a restless soul. I 
shall not even try to analyse this thing — better 
leave it to the mystery-writers who are sure of 
their occult settings, and to the theorists who 
have never smelled the salt. Nevertheless, there 
is within me something which says that to halt 
is to decay. 

Although my hair is graying and my stride 
shortening, my sympathy with adventure is as 
fresh within me as was the spirit to dare the 
day I capsized a sail-boat in a squall, and the 
doctor was called to give aid to my mother. 
She had fainted at the sight of me sitting on 
the bottom of the overturned boat. When I was 
finally rescued my father whipped me, the 
schoolmaster whipped me, and the good Padre 
gave much wise counsel to a bitter little boy. 



4 OCEAN ECHOES 

I was then, in the year 1885, ten years old, and 
that is close on forty years ago. 

That day was a never-to-be-forgotten one. 
Then, for the first time, I experienced the joys of 
isolation and the dangers that make adventure 
romantic. The sea and I have been friends; 
we have understood each other's thoughts. The 
sullen moods, the tranquil, and the boisterous, 
each in its own tone, have blended together in 
harmony, so that the Soul of the Sea is forever 
en rapport with the heart of its lover. I love 
the sea, and shall continue to, as long as I have 
eyes to see its indigo and emerald coloring, and 
ears to hear its rumbling echoes on crest and 
crag. 

My life, until I was eighteen years old, was 
spent on my father's large farm on the shores 
of Strangford Lough, in the northeastern part 
of Ireland. The last of the eighteen years were 
happy for me, but sad enough for family and 
friends. I was wild, if that conveys anything 
to the reader — I mean wild in the sense of seek- 
ing danger. My mother was constantly praying 
for me, while my father laid heavy the lash. 

There was another to be reckoned with — the 



CONCERNING WHO'S WHO 5 

village schoolmaster. Short and stubby he was, 
with a black beard and a pug nose, and eyes 
that were always searching for the bad that 
might be in a boy. I branded him one time 
with a glass ink-bottle over his heathery eye- 
brows. He's dead now, and I suppose I've for- 
given him for the welts he made on my young 
hide. 

There were four in our family, two boys and 
two girls. My brother was older than I by two 
years. He was a quiet and unassuming boy, 
always with his head deep in some book. He 
was never much of an adventurer. I mean that 
when the hounds and huntsmen went scurrying 
after a fox or a deer, he would be self-contained 
with his lessons, while I would jump through 
the school-room window and run all day with 
the horses and dogs. 

The family, I thought, loved him far better 
than they did me. They were always holding 
him up to me as the model of behavior; and 
surely he was to be admired, for he took adven- 
ture like a gentleman, as he did everything; and 
was a midshipman in Her Majesty's navy when 
I was a wildling on the high seas. He died while 



6 OCEAN ECHOES 

still in his youth, in South America, and his 
death has ever remained a grief to me, for I 
loved him quite as much as the others did. 

What I regret infinitely in my life is the worry 
I caused my mother. I feel that I was respon- 
sible for the gray in her hair, that for many 
years longer should have been black as an 
eclipsed thunder-cloud. She was the one, when 
I had been out hunting ducks in the bogs all 
night, to open the door at three or four o'clock 
in the morning, whispering softly: "Don't 
wake your father. He thinks that you went 
to bed early." That was the mother who stayed 
by me then, as her memory ever has, kind, lov- 
ing, and most long-suffering. The principles of 
forbearance which she taught me are cruel 
enough when one has to tackle, as I did, a world 
of selfish and intolerant people, who laugh when 
you laugh, and when the bumper is empty, yawn, 
and long for another day when the sea may 
break a prize more worthy. Nevertheless, they 
have stayed in my heart from her example, and 
I do not think that I am unkind, unloving, or 
impatient, beyond my Celtic nature and the 
training of the sea. 



CONCERNING WHO'S WHO 7 

Mother didn't know that a world existed out- 
side the County Down. She's dead, now, these 
many years, and I wonder if her soul's imagina- 
tion has not, from its infinite viewpoint, seen 
the world somewhat as I see it. If I am at 
fault she'll forgive, yes, she'll forgive as she 
did when I turned the boat over, and carried 
the gun without a license. Mothers always for- 
give, on, I think, into the Beyond. As I drift 
with the current of tide and time, I can see 
in every man the generative forces for good left 
there by his mother. Without them the world's 
highways would crowd with wrecks of debauch- 
ery, and hulks of men would pile high the ocean 
shores where kelp once grew. 

Our home overlooked the sea, and, within easy 
view, ships passed on their way to lands beyond 
the horizon. To a boy of ten with a romantic 
soul, those strange visitors with white sails and 
dark hulls spoke their message as they glided 
by on into haze and adventure. Left on the 
beach, I gazed with desire into a nothingness 
of lonesomeness, and longed to be a man that 
I might wrestle with the Devil or the Deep, 
and defy each. But I had to await the passing 



8 OCEAN ECHOES 

of slowly rolling years, which brought me a good 
that I did not appreciate — a well-nourished, 
strongly-proportioned young frame, fit for fight- 
ing and endurance, an eye more than usually 
steady, and an unusual knowledge of that most 
difficult seamanship, navigation of small boats 
along a rocky coast. 

I often long for a glimpse of my old home. 
I mean some day to go back there when Ireland 
is more as I remember it; and yet my memories 
seem but as those of yesterday, fleeting like scud 
across my story, leaving pictures of startling 
brightness here and there. Land glimpses, 
often, of horses and cows, of flax and grist-mills, 
hawthorn hedges blooming, hogs and wild ducks. 
Particularly of two dogs whose instincts were 
super-animal, who shared my joys and sorrows, 
and were whipped when I was whipped, drag- 
ging in with me late at night, after I had worn 
out their poor little legs trailing me through 
the bogs hour after hour without food. 

There are pictures, too, of a loving little boy 
combing his mother's hair, making her tea for 
her when she was sick, and waiting on her like 
a woman; then the wheatfield, when the wheat 



CONCERNING WHO'S WHO 9 

was in flower and the hawthorn blossoms open 
to the bumble-bee, and the thrush and the 
meadow lark alternated their song for the day; 
then "Paddy," the Irish hunter, whose soft, 
nimble lips could fumble any gate until it 
opened, and whose horse-conscience allowed 
much gleaning in forbidden pastures, in defiance 
of our stupidity. 

Paddy died from old age, and not from lack 
of care. My father may not have had all the 
fatherly instincts, but his animals were royally 
entertained, and woe betide the groom who neg- 
lected the many variations of their diet, or 
failed to give them a light clean bed of the 
proper depth! 

While I remained at home my father's main 
worry was to keep me out of sail-boats. In this 
he was never successful. He was afraid of the 
sea, and had a horror that he would be drowned 
some day while trying to rescue me. 

Father, too, is resting in a little crowded 
graveyard, beside those of his own, and the many 
who played together when he and they were 
boys. 



CHAPTER II 

An Event Which Makes My Hand Still 
Shake As I Write. — Hounded 

I WAS fourteen when I cut the schoolmaster 
over the eye. There was a hunt on. The 
red-coated huntsmen came in swarms, the 
beagle hounds yelped viciously as they passed 
the country school. The schoolmaster must 
have known of the hunt in advance. The win- 
dows were down and locked with a trigger-catch. 
The front door was locked. 

The back door opened into a yard that had 
a high wall around it, and the iron gate that 
gave on the country road was hasped fast with 
an iron padlock. To get in or out of the school 
a boy must have a quick mind and a ladder. 
I had the presence of mind, and a step-ladder 
leaned against the wall to the right of a large 
blackboard. 

The pupils were excited as they worked. The 
master knitted his brows as he gazed at the 

10 



HOUNDED 11 

beautifully garbed ladies who rode in the hunt. 
I raised my hand and spoke pleadingly: 

"Please, sir, may I go out?" 

Turning to me he said, in his most conquering 
brogue : "There'll be no leave till the hunt goes 
by." 

The better-disciplined boys looked at me and 
grinned. 

I have often thought, in reading of the various 
mystical cults, that sometime in the back ages 
I may have been a dog. The dog instinct was 
certainly strong in me that day. When the 
hunting horn sounded I was as instantly respon- 
sive as the swiftest beagle that led the hounds. 
I jumped for the step-ladder, and rushed for 
the back door. In my haste I knocked down a 
few of the boys. There was a general uproar, and 
I, heedless of everything and the consequences, 
slammed the ladder against the back wall, 
mounted the steps, and emerged into freedom. 

The village school was soon in the distance. 
I could run then, through stubble-fields and 
thorn hedges, over pillared gates and stepping- 
stiles. I overtook the hunt, passed the fat, 
stubby, gouty riders, and, knowing the cutoffs, 



12 OCEAN ECHOES 

was soon in the midst of the baying beagles. 
I ran with them till the sun went down. 

The stag that made merry the chase took to 
the ocean for safety. He was later rescued by 
boatmen, only to lead the hunt another day. 
The disappointed hounds and I, weary and 
empty, turned homeward; they to be caressed 
and fed, and I to be beaten and humiliated. So 
the hunt broke up on the beach. Red-coated 
huntsmen and beagles went each to his own 
home, and each with his own thoughts of the 
day and the morrow. My visions of what 
awaited me from an angry father that night and 
from a heavy-handed schoolmaster the next day 
made light of my empty stomach and tired body. 

I didn't skulk about. I went home to take 
my medicine. What was a whipping compared 
with a day with the hounds? My two dogs met 
me about a mile from the house. I knew by 
their big melancholy eyes that they were sorry 
for me. After jumping and frisking around and 
licking my hands they dropped behind at a 
respectful distance. It was never safe for them 
while I was getting punished, for we shared each 
other's crimes. So I got my whipping, and one 



HOUNDED 13 

that I have never forgotten. Even supper, saved 
for me, could not heal my sense of aching 
injuries, in spite of all the plenty of the Irish 
way of living in those years. But I was con- 
soled by the thought that I should soon be a 
man. In fact, not long after, when my father 
attempted to beat me one day, I warned him that 
I was unwilling to be punished again, and that 
if he tried to, he would do it at his own risk. 
That was the last. 

As I went to school next day, I could hear 
the boys whisper : 

"He's going to get it to-day." 

They were right. I did get it. I entered the 
school as innocently as the kindergarten chil- 
dren. I noticed that the master, as he looked 
at me, grew venomous, and buttoned his frock- 
tailed coat. But everything went well till roll- 
call, and I had hopes that he had given me up 
as a bad job. I was sadly mistaken. When he 
called my name : 

"Present, sir," I shouted. 

"Come up here to the desk," he roared. 

Then I knew that the price of the hunt had 
to be paid. He called the school to atten- 



14 OCEAN ECHOES 

tion, and, fixing his fiery eyes on me, said: 

"I'm going to make an example of you. I'm 
going to teach you that I am the master here 
and have to be obeyed." As he slung his epi- 
thets his voice grew fierce, and his frame shook 
with anger. 

"You'll never amount to anything," he roared, 
"you,— you,— " 

I had a bitter enemy in school — Thomas 
Coulter by name. I could hear him snicker 
behind his hands. The master stepped down 
from his desk with the cane in his hands. 

"Hold out your hand!" he shouted. "Twelve 
slaps with the cane for you." 

Four were considered a serious punishment, 
but twelve were out of the question. I held out 
my hands and took six, three on each. The 
welts were too painful for any more. When I 
refused and said that I had had enough, he 
sprang at me like a tiger, knocked me down, 
put his knee on my breast, and almost drove 
the wind out of me. Then he lost control of 
his temper and beat me unmercifully. As I lay 
there on the school-room floor groaning with pain, 
he stood over me like a madman. Then, realizing 



HOUNDED 15 

that he had done his job, he took a glass of 
water, and resumed the work of the school. 

I crawled to my seat, but not like a whipped 
cur by any means; rather with the determina- 
tion to get even with that black-eyed brute. 
Half an hour later my chance came. I grabbed 
a glass ink-bottle, and being good at throwing 
cobble-stones, I struck him over the eye, laying 
bare the bone. 

With blood dripping down his shirt he tum- 
bled down from his high-topped desk to the plat- 
form. I, weak and bruised, feeling that my job 
was done, but sick at the sight of it, crawled 
out of the school and staggered home. 

I was not sent to that school again. 

The parish people were terribly upset over 
my crime, but never a word did they say against 
the schoolmaster for what he had done to me. 
Strange to say, my father openly took my side. 
He was willing to abuse me himself, but when 
it came to public punishment I at once became 
a son of his, and as such was entitled to consid- 
eration. My mother, being the village diplomat, 
had to smooth the troubled waters, which she 
was well qualified to do. 



CHAPTER III 

I Conquer My Enemy — Irish Anne. — The 
Bandmaster 

I WAS sent to another school in another 
village, but my time there was short also; 
for the hounds and the huntsmen passed 
that way, too, and I had learned nothing from 
my former experience. I rode a donkey to and 
from that school. The distance was far, 
although you could count the Irish miles on 
three fingers of the left hand. 

One afternoon I was coming home feeling 
happy. I had been promoted to a higher grade 
and was beginning to like the school. My young 
enemy of the other school, Thomas Coulter, who 
had laughed when the master whipped me, was 
also riding a donkey that afternoon. The two 
animals met in the road, head on. They stopped 
and exchanged sniffs of greeting. Thomas and 
I growled at each other like two strange bull- 
dogs, and, without a word, dismounted, pulled 

16 



I CONQUER MY ENEMY 17 

off our coats, and flew at each other's throats. 

Thomas was older and heavier, and, as usual, 
he blackened both my eyes and made my nose 
bleed. I rode home, horrible to look at. My 
mother bathed my face and washed the blood 
off, saying, in her gallant way: 

"Oh, how I wish that sometime you could 
whip that boy." 

She cooked me two eggs, and had me drink 
a pitcher of fresh buttermilk. Then she asked 
me where Thomas was. I told her up by the 
Four Roads. I knew that she wanted me to go 
back and see if I couldn't get even with him. 
Mother was prudent, but her actions carried 
meaning. 

"Go out to the bog," said she, "and bring me 
four leeches. I must have your eyes fixed up 
before school to-morrow." 

I didn't go near the bogs. Up to the Four 
Roads I strode, and met Thomas, the boss of 
the village boys. 

"Come on," I said, "I'm going to whip you 
this time." 

He was whipped, and well whipped. I have 
often wondered since whether my success was 



18 OCEAN ECHOES 

due to the eggs and buttermilk, or to my 
mother's daring words : "I wish that sometime 
you could whip that boy." 

When I was twelve years old I had a childish 
fondness for girls of my age. I liked to be with 
them, to play with them, caress them, and — 
which often happened — to fight with them. 

One girl in particular, Anne Bailey, interested 
me. Dressed in starched aprons and polished 
shoes, she would meet me at the stile and swing 
with me on the gate. I would carry her books 
from school, and fight her fights, which were 
many. Anne, for a child of thirteen years, had 
a terrible temper. Few boys in the village had 
any use for her. I liked her because she fought 
for what she thought was right. The smaller 
children always had a square deal where Anne 
was concerned, even if she had to trim a boy 
to get it. 

My fondness for her, I suppose, grew out of 
the fact that she never lost a fight. If she got 
into a tight place where she couldn't win with 
her fists, she would resort to cobble-stones, and 
Anne could throw those gray granite, ragged 
stones, so common on the country roads in 



I CONQUER MY ENEMY 19 

Ireland, with unerring accuracy. Her enemies 
would run before her for the cover of the haw- 
thorn hedges. Yet she had characteristics that 
belong to her sex. She admired well-dressed 
boys. On Sunday mornings she would give me 
her most coquettish smile, for then I was togged 
in my best. 

When I was fifteen, mother had me join a 
band, and while I remained at home I learned 
to play the cornet, clarionet, and flute. Music 
develops imagination in the imaginative. In 
me, perhaps because I was over-imaginative, 
music wrought agonies of adventurousness and 
rainbow-tinted, velvet harmonies of the sights 
and sounds that lay beyond my ken — over there, 
north, south, east, and west; over there beyond 
the sea. Only a few rolling green waves to 
cross, in that winged ship, flitting through the 
gauzy haze, and strange lands would emerge 
from the horizon, lands of color and music. So 
different, so much more beautiful than my world. 
Surely I was a strange boy — at once bad and 
harmless, and full, as I have always been, of the 
spirit of poetry. Others I have known like 
myself, fighters of wave and man, also full of 



20 OCEAN ECHOES 

the essence of poetry — many of them, unbeliev- 
ably many. 

I was soon to test the beauties of that other 
world of my yearning. By the time I reached 
it, hardship had relegated the poetry of my 
nature to the safest confines of my heart, and 
my surface sentiment was not easily hurt, as 
sometimes is the case with others. I loved every 
phase of the sea-going life, and longed for more. 
Now it lives on in my thoughts. 

I . often think of the bandmaster, and how 
different he was from my first schoolmaster. 
What a sense of humor he had, and what pains 
he took to teach me! What long rides he took 
on his old white mule! He came on Thursday 
evenings. His breath was always strong with 
whiskey, but he seemed none the worse on that 
account in his teaching. 

Our maids, at home, were with us so long that 
they were part of the household. Only the 
dairymaid was changed from time to time, for 
her position seemed to be one that inevitably 
led to matrimony. There would be a great dis- 
cussion as to the next one to fill the place, on 
these occasions. But Maggie, the cook, never 



I CONQUER MY ENEMY 21 

changed. She had been with us for years and 
years. She ruled our goings-out and our com- 
ings-in, and woe betide us if we did not do justice 
to the good things that were set before us; no 
mean task when one considers the three hearty 
meals and the three between-meals that punc- 
tuated the Irish farmer's day. 

Maggie thought a great deal of the music- 
master, perhaps because he was good to me, who 
was her prime favorite, perhaps because he ate 
most unsparingly of everything that she placed 
before him on those hungry Thursday nights, 
perhaps because her soul was also full of music, 
surcharged with the ceaseless din of pots and 
pans. 

The bandmaster was always kind and smiling, 
and made light of our mistakes, sticking his 
fingers into his ears most comically to listen for 
discords. For the life of me I could not see 
how that process could facilitate his perception, 
but he seemed to locate discords with unerring 
accuracy. 

Surely he had a difficult task teaching us 
county boys to play together, but he did, and 
rode his mule over twenty miles of cobble-stones 



22 OCEAN ECHOES 

once a week to do it. How excited and happy 
the old fellow was, when, at last, after four 
months of practice and effort, we played "The 
Minstrel Boy" without a hitch. That was his 
favorite piece, and he felt that if a band could 
play that, it could master anything in music. 

Many years ago he and the old mule have gone 
up the Long Trail to return no more. Only in 
an occasional thought, like the memory of 
springtime, can they return — the mule and the 
Music Master. 



CHAPTER IV 

I Leave My Mother, and the Sea Claims Me. 
My Little Dogs Must Hunt Alone 

LONG before I was seventeen I had some 
knowledge of the sea. Often I had 
sailed away in an open boat out of sight 
of land, and again many coastwise schooners 
put in to the Lough. I had learned to run aloft 
and knew many of the sails and ropes — in fact 
I was about ready to leave home and sail away. 
But my mother held me for another year, hoping 
vainly to keep me to a course at the university. 
How miserable I made it for those at home! 

School I detested, and, judging from my 
changes, school detested me. Father thought 
that he might be able to make a farmer of me. 
Mother, in spite of her intellectual yearnings, 
knew differently. She knew that the wild waves 
and the flapping canvas called me, and that my 
harvest waited for me in the deep sea. 
Winter was over that year, and I was nearing 

23 



24 OCEAN ECHOES 

my eighteenth birthday, which was near Saint 
Patrick's Day (the one day in the year when 
my father permitted himself to celebrate until 
he could celebrate no more ) . The farmers were 
plowing the fields, and the hawthorn buds were 
bursting with coming spring. The wild birds 
were mating and starting to build their nests, 
and the lark, never forgetful of his praise of the 
spring, sang his song way up in the sky. 

My two dogs were old now. Prince seldom 
hunted with me in the bogs, and when one stayed 
behind the other did too. I loved them and 
hated to leave them. We had a great deal in 
common, especially Prince and I; our joys and 
sorrows together had been many. But he was 
so old and stiff that I felt that if he should go 
with me it would be only for a little while. He 
was soon to rove with the dogs who had gone 
on before him, in the valleys where deer and 
duck and rabbit and hare are plentiful, and 
dogs' barks are but memories of their yester- 
days. 

Mother saw to my going away. She packed 
my clothes, socks and pulse-heaters. These last 
were a large part of her creed. One would be 



THE SEA CLAIMS ME 25 

immune to any epidemic if he wore them on his 
wrists. I took them to please her, although 
my vocation, above all others, called not for 
pulse-warming. Then she tucked some money 
in my pocket. I kissed her good-bye, and waved 
from the hill. 

I can see her now, gathering up her white 
apron to wipe the tears away, a beautiful picture 
for a boy to remember; one of love and self- 
sacrifice that only mothers are destined to give. 
My father, I am now ashamed to say, I did not 
see. What he said to my mother I can readily 
guess, for I never saw nor heard from him again. 

When I said good-bye to Irish Anne, tears 
like dew-drops — the kind that cluster on a 
spider's web in the early morning — shone in her 
big blue Irish eyes. She was nearly a woman 
then, and religiously inclined. Her days of 
curving, cobble-stone throwing were over. We 
parted with friendship's kiss. I learned years 
afterwards that she was married, and had a 
large family of boys and girls. Perhaps I may 
have met some of her children in the highways 
of my rambles, but how was I to know them? 

The night boat for Glasgow used to make the 



26 OCEAN ECHOES 

trip in about twelve hours. I took it, and 
landed in Glasgow the following morning, going 
straight with a sailor's instinct to a sailor's 
boarding-house. It was on the Broomielaw. 

A Swede ran it. He was married to a High- 
land woman, and together they made the Scandi- 
navian sailor's boarding-house hum. He was a 
drunkard who had formerly been bosun on a 
Black Ball liner. She was endowed with Scotch 
thrift and business sense, and had always an eye 
open for a "homeward bounder" with his pocket 
full of money. Such a one could always sit at 
the head of her table, and welcome. 

The Swede had my pay for one month's board, 
and assured me a ship by that time. Seeing 
that I had still some money left, he begged me 
to put it into his care. Like the young fool that 
I was, I did this, and of course that was the last 
of the money. He went out promptly, and got 
drunk, spending it all. 

The boarding-house catered to all creeds and 
colors ; everyone was on an equal footing. When 
one sang, they all sang. In a fight everybody 
joined in, and, after the fight, when the broken 
pieces were swept away, and the scalp-wounds 



THE SEA CLAIMS ME 27 

had been plastered, they would all drink 
together and be friends again. 

The second week that I was there the Swede 
wanted to know if I would go with him down 
the Clyde on a sloop he had to a place called 
Broderick. He wanted to load her with sand 
to haul back to Glasgow to sell. Then he would 
give me back the money he had taken from me. 
Once more I "fell" for him, and went along, on 
a short but perilous trip that was to bring me 
within plain sight of Davy Jones's Locker. 



CHAPTER V 

My First Voyage With the Swede — 
Experience 

THE sloop was about thirty tons. She 
had one mast that was stuck forward 
on her. The main boom was about 
thirty-five feet long. The sails were old, and 
had many patches. The small cabin aft in her 
was filthy and full of rats. The deck was so 
old that you could see through the seams, and 
young as I was, I was fully aware of the risk 
I was taking sailing in her. But the Clyde 
never got very rough, and knowing that, and 
believing that I should get back my five pounds, 
I felt like taking the chance. 

So one morning we set sail — myself, another 
penniless sailor, and the proprietor of the Scan- 
dinavian sailor's boarding-house, late bosun of 
a Black Ball liner. 

The Swede wasn't much of a sloop sailor. I 
could see that by the way he handled her. 

28 



MY FIRST VOYAGE 29 

Between drifting and sailing we made Greenock, 
eighteen miles below Glasgow. Here he put in, 
saying that he needed water. But it was 
whiskey he wanted. He sold practically every- 
thing that was movable on the deck to a junk 
man. He did leave an anchor on board. Then 
for two more days he drank, and spent the junk 
money, while the "broke" sailor and I stayed 
on board and waited. 

On the morning of the third day he came on 
board broke and sick, and we set sail again for 
Broderick. We made it in twenty-four hours; 
that is, we made the beach where the sand was, 
and dropped the anchor about a quarter of a 
mile from the surf. We put the boat over, and 
commenced loading sand by the simple process 
of loading the small boat, rowing off, and shovel- 
ing the sand into the sloop. 

The sloop was better than half loaded, when 
one morning the Swede rushed out to tell us that 
we were caught in a storm. 

"Hurry boys," he shouted, "and get the main- 
sail on her." 

It was a storm, all right, but not a bad one 
just then. There was a good breeze coming 



30 OCEAN ECHOES 

from the southwest, and with it a long ground- 
swell. The Swede was pale with fear. The 
sloop was on a lee shore, and he didn't know 
how to beat her off. We set the mainsail and 
started to heave up on the anchor. 

I told him that was not the way to get off 
a lee shore. The old Irish fishermen had taught 
me in their fishing-smacks how it was done. 
Shoot up the jib, slip the cable, give her the 
mainsail, and away, close-hauled, to fight for 
sea-room till you get a good lead off shore. But 
the Swedish bosun would not listen to a boy. 

She started to drag her anchor, and was 
headed straight for a spit of rocks. As she 
dragged he prayed, then started to swear, and 
said that he wouldn't give a damn if the sloop 
belonged to him. 

"Who does she belong to?" I shouted, as we 
were nearing the rocks. 

"My wife and brother-in-law," he cried, and 
with death staring us in the face went on to tell 
me how she happened to be theirs. I forget 
the intricacies of the ownership at this distance, 
but I can still hear the shrill tones of his high- 
pitched voice rising in trivialities above the 



MY FIRST VOYAGE 31 

solemn tones of nature. Before he got through, 
however, I felt that the grave would be prefer- 
able to an interview with his wife once the sloop 
was lost. 

She struck the rocks. The mast went over- 
board, the sea lashed over her. The undertow 
would pull away from the rocks, only to get a 
good start with the next sea, and slam her up 
against them. We clung to her like leeches, the 
Swede crying in bitter anguish: 

"I wouldn't give a damn if she belonged to 
me — I wouldn't give a " 

Young and fearless as I was, I had but little 
hope that any of us would get off with our lives. 

The sloop gave a hard thump, and the stern- 
post was sprung from its rusty fastenings and 
floated alongside. Another sea like the last one 
and she would smash into firewood, and the 
bosun of the Black Ball liner and his crew would 
be found bloated and bruised on the high-water 
line. 

But the God of the Deep was not ready as 
yet to destroy my dream of the sea. I was to 
find worse than this before he was through with 
me. The sloop, what was left of her, by some 



32 OCEAN ECHOES 

strange freak of the waves, swung through 
head on, with the jibboom reaching over the 
rocks. The sailor was quick to seize this 
heaven-sent opportunity. He crawled out on 
the jibboom end, and when the sea lurched back 
dropped to the sloppy rock and to safety. 

I wasn't so fortunate. When I let go the 
jibboom the undertow caught me and I got 
pretty badly mauled — a cut head, skinned shins, 
a few sore ribs; and I was gorged with salt 
water. 

The Swede was doomed; that seemed a fore- 
gone conclusion. We were powerless to help 
him, and the thought made me cold with horror. 
Years afterwards, hundreds of miles from land, 
I saw men drown in sight of the ship, and felt 
the same overpowering misery. 

A short distance to the right of where the 
sloop was pounding against the rocks lay a small 
sand patch between two reefs. It wasn't over 
twenty feet wide, and here the waves swept high 
on the sandy beach. The Swede was destined 
to live. He was yet to drink ale out of pewter 
mugs, and watch where the homeward-bounder 
hung his trousers. 



MY FIRST VOYAGE 33 

While I looked, with my thoughts going 
heavenwards, a sea struck the sloop and she 
broke in two. I turned my head away. I 
couldn't watch a human being drown. Then a 
curious thing happened. The Swede still clung 
to the cabin hatch, and that part of the sloop 
was carried out and away from the rocks, and 
washed high and dry upon the patch of sandy 
strand. He was none the worse, aside from 
being soaked, while I was bruised and bleeding. 
Who shall know the ways of Fate! 

Some time later the life-savers came, and with 
them a dignified and portly-looking man, the 
wreckmaster. Very important he was. As we 
stood there shivering, wet and cold, with not 
a shilling among us, the world looked dark to 
me. Then I remembered what my father had 
once said : 

"If he goes to sea, he'll soon come home 
again." 



CHAPTER VI 

Back to Glasgow. A Livelier Chapter, on 
Girls. The Gingerbread Battle. 

THERE is always some silvery lining to 
most everyone's dark clouds. Coming 
down the beach and heading for the 
wreck strolled an Englishman. He looked cosy 
and comfortable in his Scotch tweeds and long 
homespun stockings. 

The Swede and the wreckmaster were busy 
over the salvage question, and I told the English- 
man all about our experience getting ashore. 
He felt deeply for us, or rather for me, and 
putting his hand into his trousers pocket handed 
me a gold sovereign. My, but that coin looked 
good to me ! 

The Swede's ear, ever attuned, caught the 
jingle, and he wanted me to share it with him. 

"Oh, no," said I, "every dog for himself now. 
I'm through with you." 

34 



BACK TO GLASGOW 35 

Someone paid the sailor's fare and mine back 
to Glasgow, maybe the wreckmaster, in lieu of 
paying for the wreck. The Swede stayed 
behind either to attend to business, as he said, 
or because he was afraid to face his wife. 

Why the sailor and I should have gone back 
to the boarding-house on the Broomielaw is a 
question for psychologists to answer. It is 
something I never have understood, any more 
than I can understand why other sailors con- 
stantly did the same thing, returning persist- 
ently to places where they were sure to be robbed 
and abused. 

But we did, and the reception that we received 
from the Swede's wife and her brother is one 
to be remembered. The news of the wreck had 
reached Glasgow ahead of us, and when I walked 
into the boarding-house she knocked me down. 
When I got up she knocked me down again, and 
it seemed that I was the cause of the disaster 
in that I had given her husband my money. 

Then it was the turn of the sailors who were 
stopping there. They voiced their opinion of 
the kind of sailor I was. The great trouble, it 
seemed, was that the sloop was not insured — 



36 OCEAN ECHOES 

as if I had anything to do with that. The blame 
was on me, fully. 

I made up my mind that night that if I were 
to become a sailor I should have also to become 
a fighter, because I could see that without this 
qualification one could never be a success on the 
high seas. 

The trail of my next venture of Love led into 
the Swede sailor's boarding-house in Glasgow. 
Jessie, the waitress who served the meals, 
seemed to admire me, or perhaps it was the suits 
that I wore. She was the type of a seaport girl. 
She admired new faces and dressy young men. 
While she led me to believe I was her first choice, 
she was madly in love with a fireman on a 
steamer. He was to arrive home shortly from 
a Mediterranean port, and I was to find out 
where I stood with the giddy Scotch lassie. 

He did arrive, and came to the boarding-house 
in his go-ashore clothes. Tall and lanky he was, 
and baked white from the heat of the stoke-hole. 
The coal-dust was yet in his ears, his eye-lashes 
were cemented black from the slack of the slag. 
His eyes were small and glassy, and he looked 
rather vicious as he rolled into the boarding- 



BACK TO GLASGOW 37 

house and demanded to know where his Jessie 
was. She not being there, he bought a pitcher of 
beer and sat down to drink and talk with the 
other sailors. They, being creative gossips and 
ready to humor and cater to the homeward- 
bounder, told him of the faithlessness of his 
Jessie, how she seemed to be very much in love 
with another man, and they doubted by this time 
if she had any regard for him at all. 

"Who is he?" he cried, and I trembled where 
I sat, at the sight of his gnarly fists. 

But I need not have been afraid No danger 
that they would betray me. Agreeable as a fight 
always was to them, beer was more agreeable 
still, and a homeward-bounder silenced is a 
homeward-bounder lost forever. They dodged 
the question. 

He got very angry and swore that women 
were all alike, and not to be trusted. He bought 
more beer all round, to the satisfaction of the 
sailors, and gulped down his with oaths of 
revenge. 

"I'll show her she can't trifle with my bloody 
'eart!" he shouted. 

Just then the door to the dining-room opened 



38 OCEAN ECHOES 

and Jessie walked in. She exclaimed as she ran 
toward him, "Ah, me bright laddie's home at 
last!" 

"Keep away from me, Jessie," he stuttered, 
"I've been hearing about you since I've been 
away. Now I'm going to get me another girl." 

Jessie appeared crushed, crying: "Oh, Harry! 
Don't leave me like this! I have been true to 
you." 

"Well, by God ! It's off between you and me," 
said Harry, waving her aside as he got up from 
the table. 

At the top of her voice Jessie screamed that 
if he did this she should drown herself in the 
Clyde. 

"Go to it," cried Harry, as he staggered out of 
the boarding-house. 

True to her word, she went shrieking out of 
the house, and ran across the street with her hair 
flying in the breeze, to the Clyde's rim. The 
sailors came shouting after her from the board- 
ing house, urging the bystanders with their 
shouts not to "let 'er drown 'er bloomin' self." 
I ran with them, and Harry ran too. 

Barefooted women, with children in arms, 



BACK TO GLASGOW 39 

joined in the chase. Jew pedlers dropped their 
packs and wrung their hands as they ran to the 
Clyde. A longshoreman was coiling down rope 
on the wharf. He stopped flaking it long 
enough to speak to Jessie. 

"Well, lass; you're at it again. Who is it 
this time?" 

Jessie stopped when she came to the stringer 
at the bottom of the wharf. 

"I'm going over this time," she shouted venge- 
fully to the longshoreman, "and no mistake." 

"Over ye go, then, I'll no stop ye," and he 
smiled to himself. 

"Stop, Jessie, don't jump over." And the 
bold, ale-laden fireman thrust his way up to her, 
and took her in his arms. 

The longshoreman, grinning openly, went on 
coiling down his rope. The sentimental board- 
ing-house sailors swallowed hard as if they were 
eating sea-biscuit, and bashfully stalled an ap- 
proaching tear. The pedlers walked back to 
their packs with their hands behind their backs 
this time; the mothers gave their babies the 
breast and wondered what it was all about; 
and I slunk away to where the broken shadows 



40 OCEAN ECHOES 

from the tall ships lay humped over the hydraulic 
capstans. 

This was the city of Glasgow in those days, 
and a fitting place for a jilt from a boarding- 
house waitress to a green, gawky, country boy. 
My romance of that period ended there. There 
were many more ; and, doubtless, if I can remem- 
ber them all I shall touch on them as I rove 
along, and I'll not spare myself. 

For that matter I am not ashamed of my deal- 
ings with women; and I may say of the average 
sailor of the old school as well as of myself, that 
his dealings with women are based on a light- 
hearted attitude but a thorough respect for the 
sex. 

When they are married, and their wives get 
the drift of them, they dominate them like the 
gales that squeeze them to the rigging. Their 
wish is to be bossed by someone who is feminine 
and has their interests at heart; and also it is 
rarely that a sailor's wife is jealous of her hus- 
band, for she realizes that in all conscience he is 
only human. Long months of idleness and hard- 
ship end in landing on shores where a smile or 
a wink from a woman awakes in his lonesome 



BACK TO GLASGOW 41 

heart a new fondness for the wife he left behind. 
If he seeks pleasure in foreign lands, it is not 
disrespectful to the wife he loves. The craving 
for home and dear ones comes first with the old- 
time sailor. 

Where my sea trails have led me to cities, I 
have often wondered how men I have known 
could kiss their wives good-bye, knowing full 
well that their wives were only a blind for so- 
ciety, and then after reveling all night with the 
bird in the gilded cage, go home with the black- 
est of lies on their lips. To daughters, too. 
How about the other man's daughter? The bird 
in the gilded cage? 

I once refused command of a yacht, for no 
other reason than this. 



CHAPTER VII 
The Real Thing at Last — The Ginger 

IT happened that there would be a Blue-nose 
ship to sail on in a few days, and the 
Swede's wife thought that this was a good 
chance to ship me away; so I got a bed in the 
boarding-house after my licking that night, in 
preparation for the final fleecing which is admin- 
istered to all sailors on departure from such 
boarding-houses, and is made as palatable as pos- 
sible on account of their inevitable transforma- 
tion into homeward-bounders. 

Two days later I was shipped aboard a barque 
bound for Sidney, Cape Breton. I wrote to my 
mother, and told her that at last I was off to 
sea. There was a Jew outfitting store next to 
the boarding-house, and here I was outfitted 
from my month's advance. They took it all; 
and gave me a blanket, a straw tick, a few cigars 
that I couldn't smoke, a clammy handshake, and 
this Godspeed: "Be sure and visit us again." 
That is part of their stock in trade. 

42 



THE REAL THING AT LAST 43 

Hell will never close its gates as long as one 
of those outfitting stores for sailors exists. 

We towed down the Clyde, on the Blue-nose 
barque. The crew was a conglomeration of 
everything, Greeks, negroes, Scandinavians, Eng- 
lish, Irish, Scotch and Germans. The mate was 
over six feet tall, stout and wiry, with a hand on 
him that had the spread of the wing of a mallard 
duck, and a mustache that obscured his mouth. 
His voice would chill you to the marrow, but 
he was proud of it. 

The captain was broad, chubby, and porky 
looking. He carried his wife and child along. 
She was quite the reverse of him in looks, tall 
and slender as a bean-pole. The child, a boy, 
was three years old, and able to run all around 
the poop-deck. 

When we got well out to sea, we set all sail 
and let go the tugboat. I was of very little use 
at first aboard that ship. I knew nothing about 
square-riggers. But I was soon to learn. 

About the second day out everyone commenced 
to scratch himself. Even the child would lean 
against the binnacle and scratch its little back 
and shoulders. The Blue-nose barque was lousy 



44 OCEAN ECHOES 

fore and aft, and we even found vermin crawling 
in the upper topsails. One old sailor who had 
many years behind him on the sea, remarked that 
as nearly as he could remember, the flying jib- 
boom was the highest he had ever found them 
on a ship. 

Sailors as a rule in those days were clean. 
They took baths, and scrubbed their clothes. 
The crew of our barque got busy, but while we 
drove the vermin from the decks and forecastle, 
we were never sure about the sails. They were 
never changed while I was aboard of her. 

The food was new to me. Stirabout, stewed 
apples and gingerbread, salt-horse, which was 
scarce, and pork once a week — on pea-soup day. 
The hardtack, the boss of the fo'c'sle said, was 
good. He was a Liverpool sailor, and the bis- 
cuits were supposed to have come from there. 

Far be it from anyone in the forecastle to ques- 
tion him. He was a fighter, and we had a world 
of respect for him. His word was law to the 
shell-backs. Four days out from Glasgow, a 
thick, heavy-set Dane thought that he would be- 
come the boss of the forecastle. The quarrel 
arose over the equal distribution of the ginger- 



THE REAL THING AT LAST 45 

bread. The Dane was a big eater, and a greedy 
one. 

Liverpool Jack, that was his name, had his 
code of ethics, that all were to share with the food. 
The Dane was the more powerful man of the two, 
and he tried to put his bluff across and "con" 
the Irishman. What a mistake he made! 

They stripped to the waist for action. He 
cleared the benches away to give them room. 
The forecastle was large, which favored Jack. 
In all the years afterwards that I spent on the 
sea, that fight on the Blue-nose barque beat them 
all. Jack trimmed the Dane, and beat him until 
he cried "enough." The fight was clean but it 
was speedy. There was no hitting nor kicking 
when one of them was down. The Dane's head 
was large before the fight — but who could de- 
scribe how large it was afterwards? After we 
had led him around for a couple of days he 
became quite a good Dane, satisfied with his 
equal share of the gingerbread. 

While I was always doing the wrong thing 
from a sailor's point of view, I got along very 
well in the forecastle. But not with the mate, 
who, I believe, despised me. I told him that I 



46 OCEAN ECHOES 

was a sailor, and he had found out that I wasn't 
— only a green country boy. 

When we were nearing the eastern edge of 
the Newfoundland Banks it commenced to blow 
one evening, and the mate ordered the main- 
royals clewed up. The barque carried no fore- 
royal. The breeze was too strong for this light 
sail. Usually it took two men to furl it. But 
this evening he shouted to me to shin up, and 
make it fast alone. 

I did get a gasket around it, but I was unable 
to pull the sail up on the yard the way it should 
have been, snugly furled. When I came down 
on deck again it was growing dark. The mate 
greeted me with an oath, and a kick from his 
Wellington boots. 

"Get up there," he said, "and get that sail up 
on the yard, or I'll break every bone in your 
body." 

I have often thought of that kick. That night 
was the first in my life that I felt I was alone 
with the stars. The barque below me looked 
like a helpless bug being borne away by the 
whim of the sea. The light from the binnacle 
lamp shone on the figure of the helmsman. 



THE REAL THING AT LAST 47 

What an insignificant creature he looked ! The 
very wheel looked like spider's web, spun for 
the moths of frail humanity. 

The mate had made me angry, and I was in 
no hurry to obey him, but as I looked at the stars 
above me, and the restless sea below, I felt that 
it was worth more than one kick to be allowed 
the privilege of being alone with one's self on 
the main royal of a Blue-nose barque in the fine 
thrill of such a night as this. Feeling so, the 
strength of youth aided me to the difficult task, 
and I rolled the sail up on the yard. The mate 
might abuse me, but he could never destroy the 
spirit of the sea that was born in my soul. 

We had an accident that brought gloom to the 
forecastle. A Greek sailor fell through the 
'tween decks down into the lower hold. We car- 
ried him up to the deck. He was unconscious 
from a blow on the head. He had the bunk over 
me, and we put him into it. The mate came for- 
ward with liniment, and orders to rub it on his 
head. 

"And," said he, "give him these pills when he 
comes to." 

Beecham's Pills for a fractured skull! Such 



48 OCEAN ECHOES 

was the practice of medicine aboard the average 
sailing ship of those days. 

The Greek sailor didn't come to for forty-eight 
hours, and in the meantime our Scotch cook, out 
of kindness of heart, prepared a flax-seed poul- 
tice for the head, and claimed the honor of restor- 
ing the Greek to his senses again. 

Sailors were hard to kill thirty years ago, bar- 
ring an accident, such as drowning, or falling 
from aloft. They were a good deal like the 
jackass- — they would grow so old that they'd just 
naturally wander away and die from old age. 
I know one master of a ship, who is over eighty 
years old, and just as full of fight as ever, and 
still on the job. The sailors of to-day are better 
fed and clothed, they have rooms to sleep in, and 
waiters to serve their food. "Sissies," the cal- 
loused old-timers call them. They say that they 
belong in Snug Harbor, and the sooner they go 
the better. I do not feel that they are so much 
to blame, for many of them were heroes in the 
war, but it would not hurt if they had more 
training at the hands of two-fisted men, and at 
sea the working day should be more than eight 
hours. 



THE REAL THING AT LAST 49 

Twenty-three days out from Glasgow we sailed 
into Cape Breton Harbor, and dropped the 
anchor. I may mention here that the barque 
was in ballast from Scotland. We got orders at 
Cape Breton to take on more ballast, and to pro- 
ceed to the St. Lawrence River, and as far up it 
as the mouth of the Saguenay. There, I believe, 
she was to load lumber for a South American 
port. 

Yellow fever was raging in South America 
then. Liverpool Jack made up his mind that he 
wasn't going to any yellow fever port, and so 
announced to the forecastle. 

We sailed up the St. Lawrence to the saw- 
mill town, and anchored about two miles from 
the beach. The lumber came off in barges. We 
took it aboard through the 'tween deck ports, 
and stowed it down in the hold. 

There was no possible chance that I could see 
to get ashore, and I was as anxious as Jack to 
leave the barque. The stories the crew told in 
the forecastle had me badly scared. One old 
man was saying : "I'll tell you men how it is down 
there. You come to anchor in Rio harbor to- 
night, and if the wind should haul off the land 



50 OCEAN ECHOES 

and blow from the city you're dead in the morn- 
ing. Mind yon," with warning hand upraised, 
"that isn't all, men. You turn as black as Hell !" 
he whispered 

That story was enough for me. There 
wouldn't be any escape from Rio. Out of Hell 
there was no redemption. 



CHAPTER VIII 

Jack Proves His Mettle — The Pier-head 
Jump — The Sunken Canoe 

THE captain and mate were seeing to it 
that the crew should not get away. It 
always mystified me how swiftly and 
unerringly the most secret and darkly-guarded 
news reached the "Old Man." When the time 
came that I myself occupied that envied post, it 
seemed more mysterious still when anything 
escaped my watchfulness and perception. So 
far does one advance in intelligence and the 
sense of responsibility as he earns the stages of 
promotion from the fo'c'sle to the poop-deck. 

The captain's boat was hoisted on board every 
evening, and the oars put away. There was also 
a night-watchman, who had two guns strapped 
around him, but did not look fierce to correspond. 
Being a Frenchman, and rather religious, T 
doubted if the necessity could arise to make him 
shoot to kill. 

51 



52 OCEAN ECHOES 

Liverpool Jack and I held a conference, and 
decided that the time was near to make a dash 
for freedom. The barque would be loaded in a 
few days, and then it would be too late. The 
watchman did not speak English. Jack was ter- 
ribly upset, for he couldn't speak French, and so 
was deprived of all diplomatic maneuvering. 

The watchman had a birch-bark canoe in which 
he paddled off to the ship evenings, leaving it 
tied at the stern of a lighter of lumber. We 
saw it, and kept it secret from the crew, who were 
also trying to devise some means of getting 
ashore. 

Liverpool Jack was as crafty as a sea-otter. 
One night he called me about twelve o'clock. I 
had been working late, whittling a toy for the 
captain's boy, of whom I was fond (as I have 
always been of children, finding them good com- 
pany at the worst of times), and was sleeping 
soundly. 

"Roll a suit of clothes up in your oilskin coat," 
said he. "We're going to-night. I have had 
my eye on the watchman." 

"You're not going to kill?" I asked, in a great 
fright, while I scrawled the child's name on a 



JACK PROVES HIS METTLE 53 

scrap of old paper, and left the toy in my bunk. 

"Oh, no," said Jack, reassuringly, and a little 
flattered. "We haven't time for that." 

"Here's my plan," he continued hurriedly, in 
a low voice. "Tie the bundle on your back, and 
strip naked — we may have to swim for it. When 
the watchman walks over to the port side we'll 
slide down the rope hanging from the starboard 
bow, swim to the lighter, board her, creep over 
the lumber to the stern, and then if all goes well 
all that is left to do is simple enough. Drop into 
the canoe and paddle ashore. Then we can hide 
in the woods." 

It all seemed simple enough to him, but I felt 
as if the last of my time on earth had come. 
"Suppose they kill us," I objected. 

He looked me over quickly, as if he had half 
a mind to leave me there and then. But his 
eye softened, and I knew that he had in a way 
grown fond of me, as he answered, roughly 
enough : 

"How about Rio? It's pretty damned brave 
you'll have to learn to be, my boy, if you mean 
to stay away from your mother." 

All ready, naked, and with our bundles 



54 OCEAN ECHOES 

strapped on our backs, we stood forward of the 
galley, watching the watchman. It was in the 
month of June when daylight comes in early in 
these latitudes. It was after one o'clock. 
Surely the devil possessed the Frenchman. He 
was not making a move to cross to the port side. 
Where he stood now, at the starboard side, he 
commanded a full view of lighter and canoe. I 
could see him toying with his revolver, and peer- 
ing suspiciously from time to time into the 
f o'c'sle. How we ever had come up without his 
seeing us was a mystery. 

It was past two. We were still nervously 
watching for the Frenchman to move. Mars 
hung low in the eastern sky, blinking in the 
dawn. This was my first big adventure. Al- 
though thoroughly scared, I had to admire the 
coolness of Liverpool Jack. 

"Let's go," he whispered, with fascinating 
determination. "We won't wait another minute. 
The damned Frenchman's either frozen to the 
deck, or he's asleep." 

We lowered ourselves cautiously over the bow 
into the water. Oh, but it was cold, and there 
were two miles to swim to the beach. He took 



JACK PROVES HIS METTLE 55 

the lead, and headed for the lighter, which we 
boarded. Just as we started to crawl over the 
lumber the Frenchman spied us. His voice was 
nothing to him. Just a roar in torrents of 
French, until he seemed to be about to choke. 
He fired his revolver, and the echoes awoke the 
cranes on the strand. 

Jack didn't stop for this, but with me follow- 
ing him closely, kept on for the stern of the 
lighter. He got into the canoe all right. I had 
never been in one. It was birch-bark, and in my 
haste I jumped onto it and turned it over, spill- 
ing us both into the water. The current was 
strong under the stern of the barque, and when 
we got our bearings we were well away from the 
ship. But as we rose they saw us. 

Bullets began to splash around us, and I could 
hear the mate's voice heading the outcry. 
"Dive," panted Jack, and suited the action to 
the word. I tried to, but could not on account 
of the oilskin pack. But the current soon took 
us out of range, and they began to lower a boat. 

Our feet soon struck the bottom of the sandy 
beach, and we saw, in the morning's rays, the 
captain's boat heading for the shore. Naked we 



56 OCEAN ECHOES 

landed, and naked we ran for at least five miles, 
into the woods. When we stopped the sun was 
up, and mosquitoes were there by the million, 
ready to feast upon two runaway sailors. 

We got into our clothes wet as they were, and 
lay down to go to sleep. The mosquitoes saw to 
it that we did not sleep long. When we awoke 
we were hungry and stiff. Not a penny did 
either of us have to buy something to eat. This 
thought didn't worry Liverpool Jack. 

"I'll go and get something to eat," he said. 
"I know enough French to ask for it." 

He took a trail that led to the saw-mill town, 
and when he came back he had news, and food — 
two loaves of bread, a pail of buttermilk, and a 
chunk of butter. 

"I heard that the watchman got fired," he 
mumbled between bites, "and that the mate is 
still looking for us." 



CHAPTER IX 
Buttermilk, Bunkhouse and Bugaboo 

HAVE you any more news?" said I, 
after a while, for Jack was looking 
back persistently over his shoulder, 
and it seemed to me that danger lurked in the 
trees, and that the burly mate must by now be 
hot after us. Yet I enjoyed this independence 
that I had never known before — freedom to roam 
regardless of God or Man. I wonder if such a 
taste of freedom from the laws of society is 
really good for a boy, or whether he is more 
unfit to face the world with such a background. 
Jack answered my question : 

"Yes, I have more news," he said. "We follow 
a trail that leads to the right, and forty miles 
from here we come to a river. There we can take 
a boat and go up the Saguenay to Chicoutimi." 

"But," I objected, "how are we going to take 
a passenger boat? We have no money." 

57 



58 OCEAN ECHOES 

"Leave that to me/' he said. "I've been in 
tighter places than this before, and got out of 
them." 

What a wonderful philosopher Jack was 
always! Optimistic, and never without a smile 
or an encouraging word, and yet ready for a fight 
at the drop of the hat. We filled ourselves full 
of bread and buttermilk, for we had no knowl- 
edge of when we should eat again. Then we 
stuffed what was left of the bread into our 
pockets, and started out, heading as directed 
through the Canadian woods, without guide or 
milepost or sidelight. 

We walked until it grew dark. I didn't know 
if we were on the right trail, and Jack didn't 
care. We came to an old log bunkhouse, and 
crawled into pine-needle bunks. But not for 
long, thanks to my foolishness. 

When we lay down to sleep Jack cautioned 
against mosquitoes. We wrapped our coats 
around our heads in the hope of keeping our 
faces and necks clear. Jack could adapt himself 
to anything, and in less than five minutes he was 
fast asleep. But I would have smothered with 
a coat around my head, and being sleepless, I 



BUNKHOUSE 59 

stood, looking out of the window Presently I 
thought that I saw lights moving about in the 
forest. 

"The mate ! the mate !" I cried, tugging at Jack 
in a frenzy of fear. 

"Where?" he asked, sleepily, yet alert, and 
not at all disturbed. 

"See the lights?" And truly by now there 
were a dozen of them, it seemed to me. 

"Come on," said he. "This is not the place 
for us." He grabbed his coat and ran out of 
the bunkhouse door with me after him. We 
didn't know what direction we took, but we ran 
until we could run no farther. 

"I guess they'll have a job overhauling us 
now," said Jack, panting. 

"Yes," I agreed, "we've gone a long way, 
if we've only gone straight." 

Many a laugh I've had over that chase. While 
we were sitting there, exhausted from the run, 
I saw the lights again. 

"Heavens, there they are again, there they 
come!" said I, jumping up Jack, being some- 
what infected with my state of mind, jumped 
also. 



60 OCEAN ECHOES 

"Where in Hell do you see the lights?" 

"There, there !" 

"Great God," roared Jack, "they aren't lights, 
they're fireflies!" I didn't know what fireflies 
were, but they carried their lights with them, 
and they looked like masthead lights to me. 

We fought mosquitoes until daylight broke. 
Then, damp, cold, and hungry, we continued 
along the trail. There were many trails ; which 
one led to the steamboat landing only God knew. 
We walked on. Noon came and went, and our 
trouble was now, not in the distance to the river, 
but in our stomachs. Hunger, the great dis- 
ciplinarian, wished us back to the Blue-nose 
barque. Ah! we mourned gingerbread and 
stewed apples; yes, and almost Bio and yellow 
fever. Only for the sake of filling our wrinkled 
floppy tummies. 

Jack grew silent, and I, who had never known 
hunger, staggered on behind him. It was late 
in the afternoon when we came to an opening, 
and saw a house in the distance. 

"Come on, we're all right now," said Jack. 

They gave us plenty to eat at that house, and 



BUNKHOUSE 61 

showed us to the boat-landing. How kind some 
people are in the world! The old French lady 
met us at the door. She could not understand 
our English but she could read our faces, and 
that was enough for that dear old soul. She 
welcomed us with the heart of a mother. Her 
house was our house, and Jack, who should have 
been calloused by his years of beach-combing, 
bowed his head and dropped big tears on the 
plate before him. 

It was one o'clock in the morning when the 
boat made the landing. How we were to get 
aboard without paying a fare I did not know, 
and Jack would not say. He did suggest that I 
follow him. 

"Haul in the gangplank !" the mate shouted. 

I stood trembling behind a pile, afraid to be 
seen. The gangplank was in, the boat moving. 
Then, like a flash, Jack cried : "Take a run, and 
a jump, and board her." 

The spirit of adventure fears no danger. We 
boarded the moving steamer, and hid away in 
the lee shadows of the smoke-stack. We were 
unseen, because the crew, when they took in the 



62 OCEAN ECHOES 

gangway, moved forward, and night hid us from 
the eyes on the bridge. 

I had learned more in two days, than I had 
in all the eighteen years I had lived. 



CHAPTER X 

Liverpool Jack Goes Off On His Own — Steel 
Bridges and a Waterlogged Ship For Me 

A S the boat rounded the bends in that 

/ % beautiful river, and the chug-chug of 
■^ -^ the engines echoed back from the 
granite walls that guarded the water in its peace- 
ful flow to the sea, I cuddled by the warm smoke- 
stack and, unheeding the morrow, fell asleep. 

When I awoke the sun was high, the boat was 
moored to a wharf, and the sound of winches 
greeted my ears. 

"Come on, Jack," I said, "this must be Chi- 
coutimi." We walked ashore. No one on board 
noticed us. 

There was a railroad being built from there 
to Montreal. Chicoutimi, as we saw it, was a 
good-sized town. I hunted for work, and got a 
job painting steel bridges. Jack said that he'd 
go on to Montreal and find another ship. He 
claimed that he was a sailor and not a land- 

63 



64 OCEAN ECHOES 

lubber. No railroad work for him, climbing over 
steel bridges. 

Whether there is in a sailor's makeup a cer- 
tain amount of fatalism, or whether it is mere 
childish trust in the future, or whether sailors 
take their friendships so for granted that sepa- 
ration is not a matter of moment, certain it is 
that partings with them are over in a minute; 
and equally certain it is that given the usual 
course of events, they will sometime meet again. 
Of the shipmates I have had there are few that 
I quitted forever at the end of the voyage. 

Jack said good-by to me as he would to a 
comparative stranger, and started up the rail- 
road track singing in his hearty voice the old- 
time chantey: "Going a-roving with my fair 
Maid." He disappeared in the distance with 
never a backward look. It seemed that the pros- 
pect of the two hundred and forty mile walk to 
Montreal meant nothing to him. 

I was too young not to feel heart-broken at 
being left by the only real friend I had had since 
I left home. Evidently, I thought, I didn't 
mean much to him, and it seemed that he might 
understand the weariness which bound me to 



LIVERPOOL JACK GOES OFF 65 

take work now instead of following him, and 
might concede something. But I was mistaken 
in all this, for Jack's heart was of the warmest, 
and that would be clear when we met again. 

For two months I painted bridges, at one dol- 
lar and seventy-five cents a day, for as many 
hours as twice the eight-hour day. Neck-break- 
ing work. Seventy-five cents went for board and 
room, the rest for clothes, and when I had paid 
my car fare to Quebec I had little left over. 

The call of the sea had me again, and I took 
the boat down the Saguenay, as passenger this 
time, and found a sailor's boarding-house at 
Quebec. An Irishwoman, three daughters and a 
son ran it. The food and treatment were better 
than in the Glasgow boarding-house, but every- 
body in it seemed to be either drunk or fighting. 
I have always been, as the drunkard says, "able 
to drink a drop of beer now and then." But I 
have always had a horror of degenerating 
through drinking into this low type. Where I 
got this feeling I do not know, for, with the pur- 
est of thoughts, my actions as a young man were, 
in all conscience, wild enough. My captains 
later on, when I sailed first mate with some of 



66 OCEAN ECHOES 

them on many voyages, as my story will show, 
chose me to drink and play with ashore, then 
wrung their hands over the wildness of me, and 
assured their friends that on shore I could cer- 
tainly bear watching, although when they had 
me on their ships they could sleep in peace when 
it was my watch on deck. 

By the end of a week I had shipped aboard a 
square-rigger bound for Liverpool and loaded 
with lumber. Here I was to learn another 
phase of the sea, the psychology of the men who 
command deepwater ships — and in a way I was 
to find myself. 

The captain, an Irishman from the County 
Wexford, was in the last throes of consumption. 
The mate was a big, burly Scotchman, and a 
drunkard. The second mate was old, wizened, 
and rheumatic. The crew was mostly English. 
We had one negro sailor in the forecastle, born 
of an Irish father and a black mother in the 
West Indies, who, curiously enough, could speak 
only Gaelic. I was much excited and mystified 
by all this, for he was very black himself ; but the 
mate could understand him, and I soon found 
that I could, too. 



LIVERPOOL JACK GOES OFF 67 

There were good men in the crew, and some 
excellent chantey-men among them. They ac- 
cepted me as a man, for now I stood as one, 
five feet ten, sinewy, quick of eye and hand, 
nimble upon my feet, and deep-chested. Neither 
was I ill-looking, nor ill-natured, being always 
quick to smile, and quick to sympathize, though 
I was something of a fighter. I have never had 
trouble handling gangs of men — a proud boast 
indeed for a vagabond ! Not an unusual one for 
an Irishman, either; for it seems to go with the 
black hair and clean-shavenness and roving gray 
eye of some of us, that we are often good at 
taking orders, and often good at giving them. 

We towed down the St. Lawrence to the point 
where the river widened out, then made sail, and 
with a slanting breeze started for the Newfound- 
land Banks. The captain was constantly cough- 
ing and spitting and in danger of dying before 
we reached Liverpool. 

The mate ran out of whiskey when we were 
two or three days out. He was in danger also. 
He began to act like a crazy man. The cook 
considered himself very good-looking, and was 
always anxious to fascinate the pretty bar-maids 



68 OCEAN ECHOES 

ashore. He carried lotions and tonics about 
with him to improve his appearance. The 
thirsty mate got next to this, and stole the cook's 
Florida water, three bottles of it. This he drank 
as a substitute for whiskey. 

After he had had a little of this he seemed to 
improve, and gave his orders to the crew more 
sensibly, which relieved the strain in the fo'c'sle. 
They were already superstitious, and with the 
two chiefs afflicted they figured that the ship was 
cursed, and that something would happen, for 
the scent of Florida was abroad in the air, wher- 
ever the mate moved. Something did happen as 
we were reaching away for the southern edge 
of the Banks. 

One morning the captain staggered forward 
over the deckload of lumber and asked where 
the mate was. His voice was so weak he couldn't 
speak above a whisper, his eyes were sunken in 
his head, and he looked little better than a 
skeleton. 

No one on board could find the mate, but there 
was a sailor who had been aloft overhauling the 
fore upper topsail buntlines, who said that he 
hadn't seen the mate, but that he had heard 



LIVERPOOL JACK GOES OFF 69 

a splash in the middle watch alongside. This 
settled the mystery. The mate had jumped over- 
board, Florida water and all. 

The next night we had a change of weather. 
The wind hauled to the southeast, and the sky 
turned black and stormy. The captain ordered 
all hands to take in sail, although there was not 
much wind to speak of. Not being familiar with 
storms at sea, I reveled in this new adventure. 
I got to know the ropes, yards and sails, and my 
way about the ship. I could steer as well as any- 
one on board. Neither was I afraid of abuse nor 
punishment. It was an altogether different 
atmosphere from that on the Blue-nose barque. 

All the sails were furled to the lower topsails 
and main upper topsail, so that the wooden 
square-rigger lay wallowing in the trough of the 
sea, waiting, and apparently helpless, without 
sails to drive her on. Later in the night, away to 
the southeast, the black clouds opened like the 
eye of some unearthly monster, and twittering 
stars glimmered through. 

"There comes the blasted gale!" shouted an 
English sailor, and sure enough a North Atlan- 
tic storm, such as I had never seen, nor ever want 



70 OCEAN ECHOES 

to see again under the same conditions, closed in 
upon the ship with such squeezing, breathless 
rage, that it reeled her upon her beam-ends, and 
held her there in the storm god's vice. 

The captain, although gasping for the life that 
was soon to desert him, felt, like the true sailor 
he was, that he was good for one more fight with 
the elements, and lashed himself to the weather= 
rail of the poop-deck, taking charge of the ship, 
the crew, and the night. Oh, how I longed to 
have the power to defy the wind and waves as he 
did! How unselfish he looked there, with the 
seas, green seas, roaring over him, his sunken 
eyes bright with courage, shouting out his orders 
fore and aft the ship between spasms of cough- 
ing, with never a thought of his poor old dis- 
eased body. 

"Put your helm down," he cried to me at the 
wheel. 

When the gale struck the ship it caught her on 
the beam. The yards were braced sharp on the 
port tack, and it seemed as though she'd never 
come up to the wind. The main upper topsail, 
bellied and stiff from the force of the gale, was 
pressing her down till the lee bulwark rail was 



LIVERPOOL JACK GOES OFF 71 

under water. The captain's voice sounded 
again : 

"Let the main upper topsail go by the run." 

As the yard came crashing down, the moaning 
and hissing wind in the rigging lent an uncanny 
feeling to the night. I trembled as I stood with 
my hands on the spokes of the wheel. My mind 
was busy, for unfortunately I had time to think. 
I wondered if my mother were praying for me; 
and I missed her so that had I known, as I believe 
now, that her not seeing me for so long a time 
cut short her days on earth, I would have prayed 
then, to the noise of the storm, to be forgiven. 

Still the wind raged, and still the old captain, 
lashed over there to windward of me, fought for 
his ship. 

As the buntlines closed in on the topsail, the 
ship slowly came up into the wind. We were 
saved for the time being, but the seas kept com- 
ing higher. They washed the deck-load of lum- 
ber away. One of the life-boats was carried 
away, the other was in danger. We'd only two 
boats left. A sailor commenced to swear, and I 
thought he'd never stop. He told us that the 
"bloody old hooker's" back was "broke," and 



72 OCEAN ECHOES 

demanded of Heaven and Hell to know what was 
to happen next. Towards daylight the sea was 
a mass of swirling foam, the storm was growing 
worse. 

Then we took in the fore and mizzen lower 
topsails, and hove her to under the main lower 
topsail. The captain stayed at his post, caution- 
ing the man at the wheel from time to time. 
It was now nearly eight hours since he had taken 
his post, and he continued there without relief 
for hours more, while I, young and hardy as I 
was, was grateful for relief and a cup of hot 
coffee at the end of two hours of that awful strain 
at the wheel. 

The carpenter's report, when he sounded the 
ship, was gloomy. 

"Four feet of water in the hold, sir," I heard 
him tell the captain. 

"Keep the pumps going, the storm will break 
shortly. It is just a little equinoctial disturb- 
ance." And he told the steward to serve the men 
a glass of grog. 

My opinion of the men who command ships 
was formed then and there. I realized, as I do 
now, how little the world knows of these men, 



LIVERPOOL JACK GOES OFF 73 

or of what they have given to Progress. 

We weathered the storm, and sunshine and 
blue skies were soon ours again. The thought 
of a pay-day in Liverpool, and a trip home to see 
my mother filled me with joy. Like all good 
sailors, I forgot the agonies we had passed 
through. The ship was water-logged. Four 
hundred miles from Liverpool, a Western Ocean 
steamer took us in tow, and docked the ship for 
us without further trouble. 

Strange to relate, the old captain lived until 
he had delivered the ship to her owners, and not 
much longer. He had to be taken off her in an 
ambulance to the hospital, where he died that 
day. Strange also to relate, the ship died too, for 
that very night the Queen's Dock caught fire, 
and she was destroyed. 

There is a vague superstition among masters 
that it is not the best of luck to take out a ship 
whose previous master had her many years and 
died on the last voyage. However this may be, 
some years later I was offered the command of an 
old barkentine — the Tam-O'-Shanter, I think she 
was — whose master had just died. I accepted, 
got my things aboard, and then backed out, for no 



74 OCEAN ECHOES 

reason except that I had such a feeling as many 
of us have experienced, that I should not go. 
Captain Donnelly took her, and his wife and two 
daughters went with him. They were never 
heard from again. 

Although my pay for the voyage did not 
amount to much (three pounds I think it was) 
I was in high glee, and about to take the night 
boat for Ireland, when I discovered that someone 
had stolen my money. I learned that it was one 
of my own shipmates. I was in a strange city 
without a penny. The men of the crew, lost in 
the city crowd, were of no help to me now. Oh, 
how I damned, and still damn, the sailor who 
steals from a shipmate! I couldn't go home, 
nor could I write for money, or say that I was 
in Liverpool and wouldn't come home. I did 
what I thought best — not write at all, so that 
mother would never know that I was so close 
to her. 

Once again I hunted up a sailor's boarding- 
house. 



CHAPTER XI 
The Lime-juicer, Always Something New 

THE pierhead sailor's boarding-house, 
known as Kelley's, on Pike Street, was 
always open for hard-up sailors. There 
I went, and they took me to board with the stipu- 
lation that I would ship on anything that carried 
sail, at a moment's notice. Like all the others, 
it was a starvation house ; but should Mrs. Kelley 
like you she would always give you a cup of tea 
in the afternoon. With meals it was first come 
first served, as long as the spuds held out. 

The sailors who stopped there were a miser- 
able-looking bunch of men, starved-looking, with 
their clothes in tatters. It was only by the 
merest chance that the master or mate of a ship 
would take any of them. Consequently, being a 
place of last resort, Kelley's came to be known 
as the "Pierhead Jump House." When a ship 
sailed that was, or was likely to be, short-handed, 
Kelley had his men lined up ready on the wharf, 

75 



76 OCEAN ECHOES 

and the mate, not daring to sail short-handed, 
would hastily pick and take what he was short 
of. 

I was one week at the boarding-house when my 
turn came for the pierhead jump. I had been 
hoping to get away, for I did not have the cour- 
age to write to my mother on account of my 
father's taunt; yet it was hard to stay on so 
near home. The sea held no terrors for me now, 
and I loved it more than ever. 

A Dundee ship, one of the Lock Line, was 
sailing that morning for San Francisco. Kelley, 
as usual, had his bunch lined up. The mate, a 
wiry, cunning Scotchman, jumped ashore and 
looked them over. He was short one man. 
There were fifteen of us. 

"Are you a sailor?" he asked me. 

"Yes, sir," I answered, eagerly. 

"Have you any discharges?" 

"I have one, sir." 

"This is from Quebec to Liverpool. That 
doesn't show that you are a sailor." 

My heart sank. Nevertheless he finally chose 
me, probably because I was the youngest and 
would be the easier to train. Kelley waved me 



THE LIME-JUICER 77 

good-by. He had two months in wages in ad- 
vance, and I had three shillings. 

We warped the ship out of the dock. Then 
the tugboat took us down the Mersey, and we 
were out and away to sea on one of the longest 
voyages I ever made. The ship was three-masted 
and square-rigged, with a steel hull. She car- 
ried twenty-two men before the mast — the car- 
penter, sailmaker, three mates, a darkey steward, 
and an English cook. 

She was a real lime-juicer. Everything we 
had to eat was weighed out, and our water was 
measured. The captain was fat and religious. 
He sang hymns and played on the small organ 
in his cabin most of the time. The crew repre- 
sented practically every nation on earth. 

I learned to fight on board that ship, for there 
were some tough men in the forecastle — a Dago, 
whose chief desire when he got mad was to throw 
a knife at you; a whale of a Hollander who 
thought he could whip anyone; a Dane who 
claimed that he had made John L. Sullivan take 
water. I must not forget the Greek, who be- 
lieved in being forearmed, and carried a sharp- 
pointed marlin-spike slung around his neck. 



78 OCEAN ECHOES 

After the tug-boat and pilot had left us we 
struck a blow. It was fair wind out of the Eng- 
lish Channel. Although under upper topsails 
she soon cleared the land, and ripped away 
southard into fine weather, where I felt my first 
breath of the trade winds. If there is one place 
in the world for Romance, it is under tropical 
skies in a sailing-ship. That's the sailor's Para- 
dise. There he builds his castles, and echoes 
from the past mingle with his thoughts of some 
pretty girl in a faraway seaport. Sailors get 
sentimental when the trade winds blow. They 
are more cleanly in their habits there than in 
the northern and southern latitudes. It is in 
the night watches, when the moon shines full and 
balmy winds fan the sails, that they spin their 
best yarns of shipwrecks, and sweethearts and 
hard-shelled mates. They are Neptune's chil- 
dren, as harmless as their boasts, and as flighty 
as the flying-fish that skim the dark waters. 

The Channel winds blew us into the northeast 
trades; then, with every sail set that could catch 
the breeze, we sailed on south, and away for 
Cape Horn. The sea-biscuits weren't bad, but 
we always looked forward to Thursday and Sun- 



THE LIME-JUICER 79 

day> when we got a pound loaf of flour bread. 
The salt horse and lime-juice were sparingly 
served, but we were all forced to drink the juice 
to avoid getting scurvy. 

The big Hollander bossed the fo'c'sle. How 
I longed for Liverpool Jack to trim him, and how 
often I wondered whether I should ever see my 
friend again ! I had been away from home now 
six months, and in that time I had learned more 
about human nature than I could have had I 
lived twenty years in Ireland. I felt responsi- 
bility, and had confidence in what I knew about 
a ship ; but I had much yet to learn of the waves 
and the winds, and of the minds of deep-water 
sailors. 

One night as we were nearing the Equator the 
middle watch from twelve to two was my wheel. 
The Dutchman claimed that I ate one of his sea- 
biscuits before going to relieve the helmsman. 
This particular piece of hardtack he was saving 
to make cracker hash on the following morning. 
I stoutly denied it, and just to show his brutal 
authority, he knocked me down with a swing of 
his powerful fist. I got up hurt and revengeful. 
On my way aft to the wheel the third mate no- 



80 OCEAN ECHOES 

ticed the blood dripping from my mouth, and 
wanted to know who had caused it. 

"I don't like that brute," he whispered, "and 
I'll show you how you can whip him. I'll train 
you, and by the time we're off Cape Horn you'll 
be ready." 

I hurried off to the wheel, happy in the thought 
that I had found another champion. The third 
mate had boxing gloves, which he knew how to 
handle. He taught me how to box, how to swing 
for the Dutchman with a knockout, as well as 
uppercuts, right and left hooks, and a powerful 
swing from the hip, which he thought necessary 
to bring the Dutchman to the deck. 

In the meantime the Dane and the Dutchman 
came together. That was one Sunday afternoon 
when we were sailing south of the Equator. The 
fight started over the Dane's washing his clothes 
in the Dutchman's whack of fresh water. Fresh 
water was a luxury to drink, let alone washing 
dirty clothes in it. The fat and religious cap- 
tain was as usual singing, and playing his Sun- 
day hymns; the sailors were lying around the 
deck, and the southeast trades were cooing in the 
rigging. The gentle roll of the ship was ideal 



THE LIME-JUICER 81 

for the occasion. I was particularly interested 
in this fight, and was hoping that the Dane would 
give the Dutchman the licking of his life — the 
Dutchman for some reason, perhapse because he 
had injured me, hated me, and made my life in 
the forecastle as miserable as he could. 

They stripped to the waist. What hairy 
creatures they were! More like animals than 
men. They fought like two massive bears, hug- 
ging and trying to squeeze the life out of each 
other. They knew, nothing about boxing or real 
fighting. I could see as the fight went on that 
the Dane was beginning to show yellow. He 
missed a few of his awkward swings, then fell 
to the deck, exhausted. The Hollander came out 
victorious, but neither was hurt very badly. The 
third mate was not supposed to see the fight — 
his duty should have been to stop it — but he 
managed to be near, and took it all in, carefully 
noting, for my future benefit, the Dutchman's 
weaknesses, and assuring me that when I had 
learned the pivot-wallop I should be able to con- 
quer my enemy. This was good news indeed, 
and I set about my further training with zest. 



CHAPTER XII 

The Hens, the Cook, the Storm 
and the Fight 

THE captain had for his own private use 
a dozen hens on board. Occasionally 
one would lay an egg. These were royal 
eggs, and could only be eater by the master. To 
find an egg when one cleaned the coop was to 
bring cheer to the commander's heart. The 
weather was cold now, and the hens were timid 
about laying eggs. Here is where my story of 
the fight with the Dutchman begins. 

We were to the "southard" and "westard" of 
the Falkland Islands and almost in the latitude 
of Cape Horn, but far from being around it. 
It was then the beginning of summer. The days 
were long, the winds were becoming threatening 
and cold. The sea looked boisterous and defiant, 
with its long deep rolling swell from the south- 
west. 

One morning the bosun ordered me to clean 

82 



THE FIGHT 83 

out the hen-coop, and to gather in the eggs, 
should there he any. The captain, complaining 
about the eggs, said he wondered if someone had 
not been stealing them. 

The chicken-coop was in a spare room in the 
midships house. While I was scrubbing in there, 
the big Dutchman stuck his head into the door 
and shouted : "You're the damned thief that has 
been stealing the eggs!" The mate heard him, 
and came running to the chicken-coop. The cap- 
tain was walking the poop, and seeing his first 
mate take on more speed than usual, and won- 
dering what all the noise around the chicken- 
house might be, hurried off the poop and joined 
the mate. 

' "This is the man who has been stealing the 
eggs," cried the Dutchman. "I saw him just now 
sucking one." 

The mate raved and swore, and the captain 
took it very much to heart. How dare anyone 
eat his hen's eggs? I pleaded, declaring that 
the Hollander was a liar and a cur, and that I 
didn't steal the eggs. The Dutchman foamed 
with rage, and said he'd beat me to a jelly. 

The captain believed the Dutchman, and as 



84 OCEAN ECHOES 

punishment he fined me one month's pay. I 
cleaned the coop. The captain and mate walked 
off. I could hear the captain say : "I knew those 
hens were laying all the time." I, who knew 
more about hens than I did about the Lord's 
Prayer, was well aware of the effect of cold 
weather upon laying hens, and felt that the cap- 
tain would find out sometime that hens either 
cannot or will not lay eggs in iceberg weather. 

The Dutchman was waiting for me around the 
fore part of the forecastle. 

"Now," said he, "I am going to give you a 
whipping that you will never forget." 

In spite of the third mate's instructions not to 
lose my temper, in view of my recent trouble I 
found it hard to remain cool. I faced him, grin- 
ning with rage, and said : "Come on, you Dutch 
hound! It is you who will get the whipping." 

He rushed for me as if he would swallow me 
up. I sidestepped and caught him on the eye. 
My greatest difficulty was in not allowing him 
to get hold of me. If this should happen it was 
all off with me. Back he came at me like an 
uncaged lion, with his fists flying in front of him. 
The crew gathered around approvingly, to see a 



THE FIGHT 85 

boy not yet nineteen holding his own with a man 
so much more experienced, and at least fifty 
pounds heavier. 

I caught him again, this time on the mouth, 
knocking a tooth out, and injuring my hand, 
which had a sickening effect on me. But I had 
him groggy, and all that was needed was to give 
him a swing from my hip to bring him to the 
deck. He rushed me, like all cowards, with his 
head down, and his black eyes closed. I heard a 
voice, the third mate's: 

"Put it to him now." 

I upper-cut him first, then when he lifted his 
head swung for him and the big lying Dutchman 
lay crumpled on the deck. 

"Now you can take care of yourself on any 
ship," said the third mate, as he bandaged my 
hand. I have done it, on more than one occasion. 
I only wish that social liars and evil-doers 
were as easily handled as are bullies and liars 
in the stratum of society in which sailors 
move ! 

The Dutchman made many threats as to what 
he would do to me some dark night, but I had 
him cowed and he knew it. I was respected in 



86 OCEAN ECHOES 

the forecastle, and could grab the first chunk of 
salt-horse and get away with it. 

About a week later we struck a Cape Horn 
blizzard, and, while I had thought it blew hard 
off the Newfoundland Banks, that was a mild 
storm compared to this one. Gale, hail, snow 
and sleet we had. Hours we spent reefing the 
icy topsails, clumsy in our clothes, and cold, and 
sure that if our stiffened fingers slipped there 
was a quick grave awaiting us. The seas looked 
larger to me than the mountains in Ireland. The 
ship had no buoyancy. Her cargo was Scotch 
whiskey, ale, and porter, and it lay heavy in her 
bowels. Seas flooded her fore and aft, and life- 
lines were rigged on the deck for the crew to 
work ship. 

It was hard to get any response from the cook 
these days. He refused to bake our cracker- 
hash, which any cook should do, since it repre- 
sents to a sailor the final good derived from faith- 
ful saving of crumbs. The bean-soup was be- 
yond assimilation, and only a sailor with a 
shark's stomach could get away with it. There 
was hardly a spot on the cook's face that was 
not covered with red blotches. 



THE FIGHT 87 

The God of the Sea chooses well for the sailor. 
The cook was removed from the ship the follow- 
ing day. 

It was Sunday, and five o'clock in the morning. 
The gale had not abated, nor had the sea de- 
creased in mountain volume. Storm trysails 
and lower topsails were the sails she carried. 
The wind and waves were a point abaft the star- 
board beam. The seas had a raking sweep at the 
decks fore and aft the ship. The cook's galley 
acted as a sea-wall for the Cape Horn combers. 

Two bells, five o'clock, rang the man at the 
fo'c'sle-head, and as the rolling tones died away 
in the crisp morning air we shipped a sea, a 
rolling green, white-capped comber; and when 
the decks were clear again we missed the cook, 
the galley, and the captain's hens. That was the 
end of the red-spotted cook! 

Six long weeks we fought the weather off Cape 
Horn. Hungry and cold, we struggled with the 
ship, never giving an inch. Icebergs and gales 
we met and fought, and when the wind did blow 
fair for the Pacific Ocean I realized the truth of 
the sailor's saying, that Cape Horn is the place 
where Iron Seamen are made. 



88 OCEAN ECHOES 

As the years drift by I can see that a Cape 
Horn training for our sailors to-day, nay, even 
for onr business and society men, would make 
better men of the men, and men of the sissies, 
and perhaps help to perpetuate the strength of 
the human race. 



CHAPTER XIII 

Better Weather. Liverpool Jack Again. 
I Go Ashore 

SAILORS are simple, light-hearted souls, on 
whom the load of yesterday is as light as 
possible to-day. With a favoring breeze 
we set all sail, and the sailors chatted and 
laughed like children. We sang chanteys as the 
yards went up, and our sufferings vanished with 
the cold. Soon we should be in the tropics again, 
and then hurrah for the Golden Gate and the 
Sacramento River! 

The cook wasn't missed much, nor his cooking 
either. He would have died before we made 
port. We rigged up a temporary galley and 
found an old sailor who could cook pea-soup. 
The darkey steward made bread, anyone could 
boil salt-horse. And the old sailor's cooking was 
never questioned. 

The captain grieved over his laying hens, but 
he still continued singing his favorite hymn : 

80 



90 OCEAN ECHOES 

"Come to thy Father, wanderer, come! 
Some one is praying for you. 
Turn from the sin path, no longer to roam; 
Some one is praying for you. 
Some one loves you wherever you stray, 
Bears you in faith to God, day after day, 
Prayerfully follows you all the dark way. 
Some one is praying for you." 

As we sailed northward into clearer skies, the 
winds from the palms of the South Sea Isles 
wove Beauty's dream of stars and moon 

Just as surely as the Indian finds the wild 
violet amidst the cactus-roots, so the sea never 
fails to communicate with the soul that loves it 
through some form of its ever-changing emotion, 
whether in its destructive combers or its golden 
ripples. Its magnetism sounds lullaby in the 
heart of its lover, and makes bold the spirit of 
adventure. I must beg the reader's pardon for so 
often dwelling upon this, but I seem perpetually 
to struggle with only partially effective words to 
explain what I know is the rock foundation of 
the nature of the so-called "rolling-stone," whose 
temperament oftentimes is far more reasonable 
and stable than the world in its casualness takes 
it to be. 

So the days passed on, through glittering stars, 



LIVERPOOL JACK AGAIN 91 

cooing winds, and Capricorn sunsets, and after 
four months and twenty-six days we dropped 
anchor off Goat Island in San Francisco Bay, I 
was a man and a sailor now, but shifty for new 
adventures in a country that offered every oppor- 
tunity. 

While we were lying at anchor, even before the 
ship went to the wharf to unload, crimps came on 
board, unhindered, by some ancient custom, and 
insisted upon many of the crew leaving, offering 
them higher wages if they would sail aboard 
the American ships. We had signed articles for 
the round trip in England, and any money a 
sailor got ashore at San Francisco was optional 
with the captain. If the sailor were dissatisfied 
and left the ship at that port, he sacrificed his 
pay for the entire voyage. 

I refused to go with any of the crimps, but 
remained by the ship until she docked, which 
pleased the third mate very much. He had 
taught me all he knew about navigation, and was 
proud of my battling qualities as well. (By the 
way, the Dutchman had left the ship with the 
first of the boarding-house crimps.) 

When the ship docked, I went aft to the cap- 



92 OCEAN ECHOES 

tain and asked him for some money to spend. 
He grudgingly gave me fifty cents, told me not 
to spend it all in one night, and promised me 
another fifty cents the following Saturday. 
After five months in a lime-juice ship fifty cents 
to spend ashore in one week! Surely one's 
morals were safe. Steam beer was selling two 
mugs for five cents on Pacific Street, and whiskey 
five cents a drink on the Barbary Coast. That 
may sound wonderful indeed to our prohibition- 
ized ears, but the stuff was almost as dangerous 
then as it would be now at that price. 

The captain's injustice so hurt me that I left 
the ship, and now for a time my tale must follow 
me ashore. A crimp soon had me in tow and 
took me to a sailor's boarding-house, where, after 
a few days, I shipped aboard a whaler, to be gone 
for three years. They pictured to me the beau- 
ties of the Arctic Ocean, the icebergs, the musk- 
ox, the gorgeous Aurora Borealis, and particu- 
larly the grand pay I should get from my share 
in the whale, pay which was supposed to run 
well up into the thousands by the end of the voy- 
age. The same old story has lured thousands of 
good men into an industry where Greed makes 



LIVERPOOL JACK AGAIN 93 

fortunes for a few, and keeps thousands of men 
cold, cheerless and overworked for years, only to 
release them penniless in the end. I was ignor- 
ant, or I never should have signed on. 

My bag was already aboard the whaler when 
someone behind me spoke: "Get your bag, and 
come back on the wharf." 

Somewhere I had heard that voice before. 

"Come on, now, get aboard that ship; none of 
your lallygagging," cried the crimp, fearing for 
his money. 

I turned around in answer to the voice. It 
was Liverpool Jack. In all my seventeen years 
on and off the sea, he was the only sailor I ever 
met who knew how to trim a crimp. I dropped 
my bag and ran to him, shaking him warmly 
by the hand. 

"Get aboard that ship," roared the crimp. 

"Put your bag in the f o'c'sle," whispered Jack. 
"Then get back onto the wharf." 

I was so happy to see him that I ignored his 
instructions. The result was that I was knocked 
down, and thrown aboard the whaler. 

"There, damn you," bellowed the crimp. 
"Stay there, now." 



94 OCEAN ECHOES 

I picked myself up, and jumped back onto the 
wharf, full of fight. Three of the boarding-house 
thugs rushed at me. The first I knocked down ; 
the other two grabbed me, and were in the act of 
pitching me over the rail onto the hard deck when 
Liverpool Jack ran to my rescue. Oh, hov\ T he 
could fight! He knocked them right and left, 
and I, being free now, the three crimps were no 
match for us. We fought, and fought hard on 
that slivery wharf. The crimps wouldn't hesi- 
tate to kill you. They had police protection, and 
a sailor's life wasn't worth much in the old days 
in San Francisco. 

They shouted to the mates aboard the whaler 
for help. Two burly men jumped onto the bul- 
wark rail, but before they landed on the wharf 
I hit one and Jack the other, and they fell in- 
board. A crowd of longshoremen and sailors 
were gathering around. The crimps were 
groggy. They had no endurance for further 
fight. Jack shouted : 

"Let's run for it before it is too late !" 

He headed up the wharf on a dead run, I after 
him ; and we were soon lost in the crowded street, 
but dangerously close to the water-front. "We'll 



LIVERPOOL JACK AGAIN 95 

have to get out of the city," panted Jack. "Our 
lives aren't safe now." 

We boarded a Mission Street car, and rode 
well out into the country to the end of the line. 
We hunted a quiet place, and yarned till the sun 
set and the misty dampness of 'Frisco Bay sent 
a chill through us. Then we got up and walked 
on into the night. 

It was fifty miles from San Francisco to San 
Jose. Our course along the country road pointed 
to that city. The December weather was snappy 
and a white frost made its appearance on the 
housetops and glittered like fool's gold in the 
rays of the half moon. 

As we plodded on we talked of our experiences 
since we had separated at Chicoutimi. Jack ar- 
rived in Montreal a few days after he left me, 
and finding shipping quiet there, beat it down 
to Quebec and shipped on a vessel bound for Val- 
paraiso. As usual he didn't like the ship and 
left her there. After living there for a month or 
more doing odd jobs at longshoring, he found a 
barque bound for San Francisco, and had been 
there for seven weeks when I met him. There 
were many opportunities to ship aboard a whaler, 



96 OCEAN ECHOES 

but Jack had a horror of whalers. It seemed to 
me that sometime in his younger life he prob- 
ably had been shanghaied on one of them. 

We were in a country now which I had been 
told was God's Country, where nature abounded 
in everything for the needy, and wages were high. 
Little I dreamed, as I walked along that night, 
that I was living in the panic of 1893, and that 
Hunger's skeleton grinned at me as I passed the 
milestones. Wages of fifteen dollars a month 
were not for such men as I, that year, when even 
sturdy, steady, domestic laborers found it hard 
to get work. 

Jack and I, heedless of the currents and reefs 
that we were steering into, hiked on, and at two 
o'clock in the morning walked into Kedwood 
City, tired and hungry. The town was small in 
those days. A few lights glimmered through the 
trees. A dog or two barked at our approach, 
and steeled the night policeman to action. To 
be sure he was well armed, having his night stick, 
and a gun strapped at his side. He headed 
straight for us, his club in his hand. 

"Where are you hoboes going?" he shouted. 

"We're bound for San Diego," answered Jack. 



LIVERPOOL JACK AGAIN 97 

"Well, keep a-moving," he said. "You ain't 
a-goin' to find San Diego in these parts." 

We walked along a little farther, when Jack 
suddenly stopped short. "Listen," he whispered. 
Then I could hear the chug, chug of a locomotive 
down in the freight yard. 

"Come on," said he, "we'll walk no more, we'll 
ride in a freight car to San Diego." 

I believe that Jack knew that San Diego was 
in California, but in what part of California I 
am sure he did not know. I myself am not good 
at directions except at sea, and in its nearest 
parallel, the desert, and I have often noticed how 
free and easy other sailors are with distance on 
land. Jack knew, however, that wherever San 
Diego might be it was a seaport, and assured me 
with happy confidence that only the best ships 
left there! 

An old nightwatchman in the freight yards 
told us that a freight was leaving for Fresno 
shortly, and that there were many empty box- 
cars in it. We crawled into one, and hid away 
in a dark, smelly corner, and were off — unfared 
passengers, cold and hungry. 

We must have slept for a long time, when the 



98 OCEAN ECHOES 

door opened letting in the sun and an unwelcome 
brakeman. 

"Where in Hell are you 'boes going?" he 
roared. 

"San Diego," answered Jack, rubbing his eyes. 

"Have you any money?" 

"Not a damned cent." 

"Well, get off the train before I throw you off." 

"I have a dollar," said I; but Jack shook my 
shoulder, and announced his intention of getting 
off, saying airily that he needed to stretch his legs 
anyway. As we alighted among the vineyards — 
for we had ridden far on that freight train — the 
brakeman swore in disappointment that we, and 
not he, still had our last dollar. 

There was a little town amid the vineyards, a 
cozy little town, with its church and blacksmith 
shop, looking all new and shiny in the sun ; and, 
better for us, a Chinese restaurant. There half 
the dollar fed us heartily, and turned our outlook 
upon life into gold also. We were not far from 
Fresno, we were told, and there was no work 
to be had. The Democrats, under Cleveland, the 
local gossips said, had bankrupted the country, 
and the farmers were facing starvation. The 



LIVEKPOOL JACK AGAIN 99 

only salvation for the country lay with the Popu- 
list Party. What a pity that the very men who 
need to hear reasonable discussion are the far- 
thest removed from any opportunity to listen 
to it! 

I began to long for the roll of a ship and the 
spray from the deep. I seemed to be going from 
bad to worse, with fifty cents in my pocket and 
gloom ahead. When I suggested going back, 
even if it involved shipping on a whaler, Jack 
only laughed. Going without a few meals was 
nothing to him, and beating his way on trains, I 
discovered, was actually a source of joy. Ships 
to him were only a means of conveyance to leave 
lands where adventure had become monotonous. 

We learned that there would be a freight train 
that afternoon for the south. I left Jack, who 
never walked for pleasure, to take a country 
stroll. I walked through the vineyards and saw 
white men and Japanese pruning the vines. The 
work looked nice, and I felt that I could do it if 
only I had a job. 

When I got back I saw that Jack had been 
drinking, although it was hard to tell how he 
could have got it; and when the train came in, 



100 OCEAN ECHOES 

and the brakeman warned us off it unless we had 
money to give him, Jack, more courageous after 
drinking than I was sober, shouted to me as the 
train swung past, to "catch the gunnels"; and 
himself suited the action to the word by swing- 
ing under and up to rest on the "gunwales" — 
the longitudinal rods which are placed close to 
the ground under the cars. 

While I stood passively by, unable to compass 
this process sufficiently quickly to follow suit, 
the train gathered speed, Jack waved his hand to 
me, and was gone. Into space for another span 
of years ! 



CHAPTER XIV 

Benefit op Clergy — New Style 

"Where Duty Whispers Low, 'Thou Must'— The 

Youth Replies, 'I Can' "—But That Does 

Not Apply To Vines. 

FEELING now more alone than I had felt 
in Canada, I turned aimlessly and headed 
off into the country. Presently I came to 
a lane, and to a farm house, and to a man milking 
cows, chewing tobacco as he milked. His hairy 
head was buried in the cow's flank, and his boots 
were crusted with manure. As I approached him, 
asking if he were the farmer, a girl called from 
the back porch : 

"Father, mother says that you are to be sure 
to leave enough milk for the calf." 

He grunted. "Yes, Ellen." Then, looking at 
me out of the corners of his eyes : "Well, suppose 
I be the farmer here, what do you want?" 
"A job," said I, brazenly. 

"Young feller, I ain't got work enough for my- 
self to do, let alone hiring a man." 

101 



102 OCEAN ECHOES 

"I must have work," said I, desperately. "I'm 
broke and I've got to earn some money. I know 
you have work for me to do as long as you have 
grapes to prune. I can milk cows, too, and I'll 
work cheap." 

He looked me over from my shoes up. While I 
wasn't clean, I was respectable-looking. He 
handed me a tin bucket. 

"Milk old Muley, there by the gate," he said, 
and I milked old Muley in a hurry. I stripped 
her clean, for having been raised on a farm, milk- 
ing was second nature to me. 

"Have you another one?" I asked eagerly, 
handing him the bucket. 

"No," he growled, picking up the buckets and 
starting for the house, "but stay here till I come 
back, I may have some work for you to do. I'll 
talk to Ma." 

I waited, and hoped, and prayed, for a job. 

Then the farmer's voice sounded from the 
house: "Come on here, stranger." 

His wife, a short fat woman, but rather neat 
in her gingham dress, greeted me with, "How did 
you come to be broke?" I told her the whole 
thing, as a boy would. It seemed ages since I 



BENEFIT OF CLERGY 103 

had been in a home. The girl, about Beventeen 
years old, and good-looking, was listening in the 
pantry. 

Evidently the mother approved of me. At 
any rate she was the boss of that farm, as was 
plain to see. "I can give you a week's work," 
she said, "but mind you, I can't pay much. 
Fifty cents a day and board." 

"I'll take it," I said, cheerfully. 

We had supper together, I leading in the con- 
versation. The food wasn't bad, considering the 
time. Potatoes and bread and tea there were, 
plenty, and a slice of fried bacon for each one. 
Then there were stewed pears for dessert. 

The farmer made a bed for me in the barn 
with the cows and horses, and I went to sleep, 
but fitfully, for however pleasant the noises and 
stampings and barkings of farm animals may be 
to a farm-lad, they are very different from the 
voices of the sea, and the cobwebbed rafters of 
a barn, loomy and spaceful as they are, release 
one too suddenly from the oppression of the 
ship's forecastle ceiling. 

At four o'clock he called to me : "Get up and 
milk the cows." 



104 OCEAN ECHOES 

"Where's the pump?" I inquired, turning out. 

"What do you want the pump for, this time of 
the morning?" 

"I want to wash my head and face." 

"You'll find it on the porch," he mumbled. 
"I don't wash till breakfast time." 

I doubted that he did then, as he was never 
etiher washing or washed when I saw him, and 
I'm quite sure that he couldn't have combed his 
hair even if he had tried. 

One week I spent working around the barn and 
stables cleaning them out. It seemed that it had 
been many months since they had been touched 
by the hand of man. I afterwards found that 
some farmers prefer to move their barns, rather 
than cart the manure away. Then they buy 
fertilizer for the land. 

The girl and I became fast friends, which I 
could see did not please the mother, who grew 
colder and colder at meals. 

"Can you prune grapes?" asked the farmer one 
evening, after I had earned three dollars in the 
Land of the Golden Gate. 

"Oh, yes," said I. "I can do anything." 

This utterance proved my downfall. I had 



BENEFIT OF CLERGY 105 

never pruned grape vines, but I had seen the Japs 
and others do it, and it seemed to me that all that 
was necessary was to clip off the long trailing 
vines. 

Next morning he gave me the pruning shears, 
and with a wave of the hand started me in on 
the thirty or more acres he had to prune. I 
started in with a will, hoping to show my ap- 
preciation of his giving me work, and slashed 
right and left, pruning close to the vines without 
regard for bud or balance. Towards noon my 
master came to see how I was doing, and, to my 
dismay, swore he'd have me shot. So violent 
was his rage, and the anguish of his wife, who 
mourned the day that ever she had befriended 
me, that I was grateful for the three dollars I 
had earned and a drink from the pump. 

This much better off than I had been a week 
ago, and with some knowledge of how not to 
prune, I waved my hat to the girl, and started 
up the main road, reflecting upon my fortune. 
To this day I laugh when I think of that adven- 
ture, and my utter meekness about it. Many 
years later I was invited to do pruning in the 
vineyard of a lady who ran her own ranch, and 



106 OCEAN ECHOES 

refused to allow me to stay there unless I would 
work for her. Tempted as I was, I ran no risks. 

"Madam," I said, "ask me to dig for you, or 
carry wheat for you, or milk your cows — or even 
die for you if necessary, but do not ask me to 
prune grape-vines." 

"You are very firm," said she. 

"I am," said I ; "at any sacrifice." 

My wife, reading over my shoulder, laughs 
aloud at this. "Why didn't you tell me then?" 
she asks. "You don't know how foolish I 
thought you were." 

"There's pruning and pruning," I answer, "and 
I feared the worse evil." There is an answer 
from her, but not worth while to mention ! 

How to get to a seaport was my next problem, 
for I had made up my mind that the sea was the 
place for me. I was about as close to San Fran- 
cisco as I was to San Diego. I walked to the 
village, and sat down upon a pile of railroad ties 
to ponder the past and speculate upon the future. 
For Youth, out of a job, pondering the past has 
prickles and thorns of thought; the future is 
refuge. For Age, doing the same thing, bygones 
are apt to be bygones, but the thought of the 



BENEFIT OF CLERGY 107 

future in the light of history is a curse to failing 
muscles. 

I was beginning to believe that I had made a 
fatal mistake. I should never have left home. 
My mother was the truest friend that I'd ever 
know. I couldn't have her here, and I doubted 
if in this strange country of barking dogs and 
selfish people, I could ever make a go of it. I 
resolved then and there to follow Liverpool Jack 
to San Diego, and there to try to ship for Eng- 
land. A comforting thought, but by no means 
to be borne out in the event. 

Suddenly there was a shout from behind me. 
Turning quickly, I saw five men coming towards 
me. 

"Where are you going, Bo?" one of them cried. 

They were unshaven, dirty, and ragged, and 
their shoes were worn solelesS: 

"I am bound for San Diego," I said, glad of 
their cheerfulness. 

"Keep away from there," said the tallest of 
the men. "We've just come from there. I'm 
here to tell you it's the hungriest part of the 
state." Then he told me their story, while the 
others pulled themselves up to the pile of ties, or 



108 OCEAN ECHOES 

stood around commenting. They couldn't find 
work anywhere, and little of anything to eat. 
One had a wife and children back east. For the 
sake of a sick little one he had come west to find 
a home for them all, and he hadn't the nerve to 
write how dismally he had failed. Had names 
meant anything to me then, I should have been 
interested in that man's name, for it was well 
known. So it is in the west, one cannot judge 
from appearances at all. A longshoreman I 
knew afterwards became one of the most influ- 
ential of United States senators, and a woman 
who took in washing in my day became one of 
what used to be called New York's Four Hun- 
dred. 

The narrow waists and long cheek-bones of 
these five men lent corroboration to their state- 
ment that they were half-starved, and I could not 
sit there with money in my pocket and see men 
hungry to vagueness. I invited them to go to 
the China Restaurant, and then and there got the 
worth of my three dollars. If I were never to 
eat a meal again the smile of soul-appreciation 
that came into their emaciated faces was reward 
enough. Besides, to-morrow was another day, 



BENEFIT OF CLERGY 109 

and it was well to approach it in good condition. 

They declined to accept the invitation to the 
China Restaurant as being an imposition, but 
took two of my three dollars to buy food to cook. 
The tall one ran to the village store. The others 
rustled cans in which to cook, and started a fire. 
In less than an hour they were eating, and what 
a meal they had! Potatoes, bread, steak, and 
coffee. They invited me to eat with them. I 
watched them eat, for I wasn't hungry. My 
stomach wasn't empty, and I got pleasure out of 
watching them fill theirs — a pleasure that more 
thrifty people cannot feel, for they have no last 
dollar. 

With their waist-lines filled, the talk of my 
guests became more optimistic. The tall one 
spoke : 

"Do you see that church over there?" 

"Yes," I replied. 

"Men like ourselves are always sure of a dol- 
lar from the priest who lives there. But here's 
the trouble," and he licked his lips,, "you've got 
to put on the gloves and box with him or you 
don't get anything. He's mighty handy with 
the mitts." 



110 OCEAN ECHOES 

"Did you try him out?" I asked, with interest. 

"Nothing doing. I met a man down the road 
a piece who said he took the beating of his life 
for a silver dollar, and he sure looked it." 

Towards evening a north-bound freight pulled 
in, and stopped. The five men said good-by, and 
as she started to move, like the professionals they 
were, grabbed hold of the gunwales and slid 
under the train as if they were going to bed. 
They, were off, and I was alone again — alone with 
one silver dollar. 

I thought of the priest and the possibility of 
getting another dollar. I certainly could use 
one. I walked over to the church, and there, 
sitting on the steps, was the priest, a very burly 
priest indeed. He could see, I suppose, what I 
was after, for he jumped to his feet, stretched, 
and felt his muscles. I took this for a warning 
destined to inspire anyone with terror, auto- 
matically sorting out the sheep from the goats, 
so to speak. 

I wished him a good evening, and he asked 
me what I wanted. 

"I want to earn a dollar." 



BENEFIT OF CLERGY 111 

"Come right in here, my boy," and he led me 
into a small house that adjoined the church. 

In a room that was not much larger than eight 
by ten, he stopped. I pulled off my coat without 
a word, while he ostentatiously juggled some 
dumb-bells. 

Then : "You are sure that you want to tackle 
me?" he inquired. 

I should have liked to say no, but I wanted 
his dollar so badly that it was worth a beating 
to me. I assured him that I was ready. 

He handed me the gloves, and put his on with- 
out comment or question. We squared away. 
He caught me a wallop on the ear and I went 
down. When I got upon my feet again I forgot 
all about the dollar I was earning and the man 
who wore the broadcloth. I felt that I was back 
on a ship, and I wasn't going to lose a fight. 

I caught him on the jaw and staggered him, 
following it up with an uppercut that knocked 
him down. When he got up he was bleeding 
freely, and science lost its art. He started slug- 
ging. Here was where I shone. I whipped him, 
and whipped him well, and until he cried enough. 



112 OCEAN ECHOES 

As if nothing had happened, he took me to a 
sink where I washed my blood and his blood off 
me. Then he wished me good-by and Godspeed 
with apostolic dignity, and my reward was not 
one dollar — but five ! 



CHAPTER XV 
More Trouble — The Hog Business 

IT was dark now, and the air cold. I crawled 
into an empty box car that stood on a side 
track. I must have slept, for I awoke with 
a start as another car struck the one in which 
I was. Then the whole thing started to move. 
I was off on a train, I didn't know where. 
Through the night I looked out of the side door, 
but couldn't tell whether we were headed north 
or south. No one bothered about me. I doubt 
if the brakeman knew I was there. It was noon 
the next day when I crawled out of the car. I 
discovered that I was headed north, and guessed 
that I was near Sacramento, and about seven 
hundred miles north of San Diego, which proved 
to be true. 

"Well," thought I, "I'll have to make the best 
of it. I am ninety miles from San Francisco, 
and that is some satisfaction." Poor Jack's 
horror of whaling ships and his language about 

113 



114 OCEAN ECHOES 

them and all that belonged to them arose within 
me, and the thought of the fighting crimps made 
me wish I were anywhere else. 

But hunger often rules our destinies, and I 
was hungry. The train had stopped at a siding, 
and there was no town in sight. I walked off, 
and followed a country road, where I saw a man 
ahead of me driving a sorrel horse hitched to a 
wagon with milk-cans in the back. I overtook 
him, and spoke to him, asking if he knew of any 
chance to work in the neighborhood. 

He pulled up the reins, and shouted in clear 
Irish brogue : 

"Whoa, there, Jerry!" 

"Can ye milk cows?" he asked, looking down 
on me, and there was something about him that 
took me back to Ireland, almost breathlessly. 

"Yes, I can," I said. 

"Jump up on the wagon thin," he commanded. 
"The job I'll be givin' yez won't be much," he 
went on, "but if you're broke you ought to be 
glad of anything." 

He jerked on the reins, gave Jerry a cut with 
the whip, and we were off to O'Donnell's farm, 
this being the land of my new master. He was 



MORE TROUBLE 115 

past sixty, white-haired, wrinkled-faced, his 
hands showing the toil of years, his upper lip 
long, broad, and sadly humorous, frequently lift- 
ing to show a mouth almost destitute of teeth. 

We pulled up at his farm, if a farm you would 
call it. A small barn and the house where he 
lived comprised the buildings on the place. Ten 
acres of land were the farm, and a few hungry 
cows the visible stock. We unhitched Jerry, 
putting him away in a dirty stall, with a forkful 
of hay for his dinner, for which he thanked me 
gratefully with a nicker. 

Then I went into the shack where O'Donnell 
was cooking. It was a large bare dirty room, 
without partitions. On the table he was carv- 
ing a large boiled beef-heart that had not been 
recently cooked. "A foine meal for a healthy 
man," he said. Boiled heart, bread, and 
skimmed milk. He informed me that he always 
said grace before meals, and proceeded to do so. 
Although there was not much on the table to be 
grateful for, I echoed his "amen" loudly and 
thankfully. I was hungry, and the bread and 
heart disappeared like snow before a summer 
sun. 



116 OCEAN ECHOES 

"Now," said O'Donnell, wiping his mouth on 
the oil-cloth cover, "I'll tell ye what I'll be 
wantin' ye to do. There's fifteen cows to milk, 
and I'll help yon some. You get up in the morn- 
ing about three o'clock and start to milk. By 
four o'clock, we'll have it in the cans, then I 
drive to town and deliver to my customers. I'm 
back here by nine o'clock. The reason that I'm 
late to-day is that I've been dickering with a 
man about buying hogs." 

"Oh, you're going into the hog business?" said 
I, pushing back from the table. 

"Yes I'm thinking about it. There's money In 
hogs these days, and I have a fine place for them. 
But to get back to your work. As I said, I get 
home about nine o'clock. While I'm gone you'll 
do the chores, clean out the cow barn, and turn 
the cows out to pasture. It isn't much grass 
that's in the field, but shure they get the 
exercise." 

"Now, me bye," he concluded, getting up from 
the table, "after you have finished, water the 
little roan horse, he's in the stall in the north 
end of the barn. I'll be home be the time you 
have the work done." 



MORE TROUBLE 117 

I was just congratulating myself upon not be- 
ing asked to do what I didn't know how to do, 
when he turned around, saying: 

"Howld on, me boy, do you know how to drive 
a team?" 

This was no time for unmanly weakness. I 
gulped hard, as I assured him that I did, for it 
was not the fact. However I found afterwards 
that I could do it very well. He went on to tell 
me that he had bought a lot of hop-poles from a 
man who had a yard down by the Sacramento 
River, and that he was hauling them to sell to 
a Chinese laundry. This would be part of my 
work, and I should be paid twenty dollars a 
month for it. 

How easily some human beings are satisfied, 
and how little it takes of the sunshine of life to 
make them happy ! I felt that now I had found 
a friend in this strange old man. He told me a 
great deal about his business, and rather hinted 
that I go into partnership with him in the hog 
business. It seemed that there was money in 
these dirty creatures. Anyway, it would be a 
start in this new country, and I wrote home and 
told my mother how well I was getting along, 



118 OCEAN ECHOES 

and how prosperous I should he some day, think- 
ing how delighted she would be over my fine 
prospects, quite regardless of the present truth 
of it. 

We did become partners in the hog business, 
and in the three months that I worked for O'Don- 
nell my wages went with his money to increase 
the stock over the sixty hogs we already had; 
and as things looked brighter I even neglected 
my clothes to save money. I wasn't presentable, 
but that didn't matter, for was I not going to 
make a lot of money right away? Then I 
planned, I should branch out for myself on a 
large scale. 

My work these days seemed never to be done, 
what with milking, feeding the stock, hauling 
wood to the China Laundry, and taking O'Don- 
nell evenings to the small neighboring towns, 
where he made impassioned stump speeches for 
the Populist Party. 

He was very particular about his speeches, and 
Sundays were devoted to rehearsing them in the 
barn, the acoustics in the shack being considered 
inadequate. At least in the barn we had an 
appreciative audience, for every strophe was 



MORE TROUBLE 119 

punctuated by a chorus of moos, brays, whinnies 
and cackles. 

"I shtand here to-night before yez, Min," he 
would commence, "a praycher in the cause av 
the People's Parrty. From the tops av th' moun- 
tains to th' broad expanse av th' Pacific, let me 
words ring home th' missage!" 

Our luck on these excursions varied. We were 
always sure of an audience, but not always sure 
of a flattering one. One night while O'Donnell 
was warming up to his subject, someone put a 
whistle under Jerry's tail. He ran away, and 
spilled us both out of the wagon. We had to 
walk eight miles home. O'Donnell seemed to 
think nothing of this. The cause was just, he 
said, there had to be martyrs, and that was the 
end of it. 

Well I remember the last load of hop-poles 
that I hauled to the Chinaman's Laundry. I had 
gotten to know some of the Portuguese living in 
the bottom-lands of the Sacramento River, along 
which my road lay. Since it was the last load, 
Manuel Da Costa insisted that I take a drink 
with him of home-brewed Portuguese brandy, 
known in those parts as "jackass brandy." 



120 OCEAN ECHOES 

He had been kind to me, helping me often to 
free the wagon wheels when they sank too deep 
into the soft river mud. To please him I took a 
drink, and then another, for it tasted good, and 
did not seem to have a kick to it. Then, bidding 
him good-by, I jumped into the wagon and drove 
off. 

There was a freshet in the Sacramento River, 
and it ran foaming. After about a mile the jack- 
ass brandy took complete possession of me. 
Quickly and quietly it did its deadly work ! Re- 
gardless of danger or icy chill, I decided that the 
river looked good to me, and without a moment's 
hesitation I climbed down, tied the horse, jumped 
fully clothed into the mad roaring river, and 
swam across it and then back again. 

The icy water had no influence whatever on 
me, nor did I feel ashamed of myself until long 
after I had untied the horse, and headed, wet as 
I was, for the town. However, I never told 
O'Donnell, knowing full well his feelings on the 
subject of temperance. As time went on, and I 
realized how narrow had been my escape from 
drowning, I decided that never again would I 
be beguiled by jackass brandy. 



MORE TROUBLE 121 

It was a little over a year that I had been away 
from home, and my three months was drawing 
to a close, when it seemed that the time had come 
for expansion in the hog business. O'Donnell 
bought garbage and hauled it every morning 
from the city to feed the stock. They throve on 
the feed, and in the muddy coolness of the ditch 
where they buried themselves. We were to kill 
ten of the heaviest in a few days to sell, and with 
the money buy shoats five weeks old to raise and 
fatten for the market. 

It was time to commence to build castles, for 
six months more would give us substantial money. 
My castle took the form of a cozy little farm, 
and included a cozy little wife, too; for I was 
becoming much enamored of a red-haired lassie 
whose father raised strawberries. She liked me 
in spite of my clothes, and the way I had of 
talking to my pigs; and in spite, also, of her 
father, who informed her that I was nothing but 
seaweed that the storm blew in. 

Nevertheless, I kissed her one day through the 
fence — a barbed-wire fence at that — and a thrill 
went through me, the like of which I had never 
known before. I began to long for the comple- 



122 OCEAN ECHOES 

mentary companionship of her, and I thought of 
her sharing my days, and bringing my lunch to 
me at the plow. 

How full of nothingness are dreams! They 
are but fading specters on a wasteless sea — the 
closer you sail to them the farther they are away. 
Two days after my kiss, the hog farm was in 
mourning. Every last one of the hogs died from 
hog cholera. 

I dug holes for them, and covered them up 
where they lay, and as I buried them I felt em- 
bittered with the laws of human averages. Why 
should I be sacrificed when the sun was shining 
on Youth and Obedience. What had I done to 
merit this curse from Fate? Years afterwards, 
while sailing mate on a ship to the South Seas, I 
read in a magazine how to guard against hog 
cholera. Poor old O'Donnell and I knew noth- 
ing about vaccinating hogs, and I doubt if more 
than a few people in that neighborhood knew 
about it at that time. 

The hogs were buried, and the sun had set on 
Youth and Old Age huddled together in the 
shack, each complaining after his fashion. We 



MORE TROUBLE 123 

supped together on beef heart and boiled pota- 
toes, and when the candle burned low I blew it 
out and each went to his own bed, a shakedown 
of straw on the shack floor : O'Donnell to dream, 
perhaps, of the long ago when life was not a 
question of potatoes with or without beef heart, 
and held some hope for failing years; I to turn 
toward the morrow's dawn, when I should make 
a new start — not with hogs this time, but under 
flapping sails on windy seas, where the squeal 
from a swivel clock would soothe the squeal that 
echoed from lost hopes. 

O'Donnell said good-by to me with some grief, 
and from out of his old soppy overalls fished nine 
dollars. 

"Here, take this," he said. "If I had more I 
would gladly give it to you. You are not the 
bad sort of a lad." 

I thanked him, and, with a heavy heart, left 
him to bid another good-by at the next farm. 
Walking across a field that I had recently plowed, 
the new soil had a longing-to-remain smell for 
me, an odor that took me back home to the spring- 
time of the year, when the plowing was being 



124 OCEAN ECHOES 

done, and the beveled furrows crumbled under 
the sun heat of the day. They were crushing 
memories, and I felt them keenly. 

As I squeezed through the barbed -wire fence 
and onto the farm of my sweetheart's father, 
O'Donnell called to me : 

"I say, if you ever happen around here again 
I'll be glad to see you, but wherever you go spread 
the gospel of the People's Party." 

I assured him that I would, whether on land 
or sea. 

Mr. Curran, the girl's father, was hoeing 
strawberries. 

"I hear that your hogs died," he snapped, as I 
approached him. 

"Yes, every one of them." 

"Well, I expected as much. It takes men to 
raise hogs." 

He continued hoeing his strawberries. "What 
are you going to do now?" he asked presently. 

"Oh," said I, pitifully, "I am going back to 
sea." 

"I'm thinking that's the place for ye." 

"I'm going to say good-by to your daughter, 
Ellen," said I, walking off towards the house. 



MORE TROUBLE 125 

He grunted assent like one of my dying sows. 
Ellen was there. She knew that I was leaving. 
Whatever her father had said about me, I knew 
that it was nothing good, but still she was fond 
of me. 

"Ellen, I have come to say good-by. I had 
hopes of being able to stay, but you have heard 
about the hogs." 

"Yes," she said, "I've heard nothing else 
around this house. Father said you'd sure have 
to go now." 

I kissed her good-by, and there were tears in 
the eyes of both of us. We were too young to 
pledge ourselves to each other, and I never saw 
her again, but I am sure that Ellen made some 
lonely man happy. In reviewing the girls that 
I have known since then, I find that my wayward 
fancies leaned strongly toward red hair. Ex- 
cepting, of course, wives — but let Time tell that 
tale ! 



CHAPTER XVI 

The Loyal Legion Button, Baled Hat, and 
Jackass Brandy Again 

TBE railroad fare from Sacramento to San 
Francisco was two dollars and fifty cents. 
I bought a ticket and rode there, to the 
City of Crimps. I knew what to expect once I 
fell into their hands, but beggars can't be 
choosers, six dollars wouldn't last long, and 
sooner or later it would be a sailor's boarding- 
house for me, and then away to the ends of the 
earth on anything that carried sail. 

When I got off the train in San Francisco I 
walked around like a stray dog smelling for sym- 
pathy. The street lights flickered in the evening 
shadows; the smell from Fourth Creek, where 
the city sewage emptied into Mission Flats, was 
thick and nauseating; coastwise schooners were 
discharging lumber in the creek, and that part of 
the city was as tough as the Barbary Coast. 

There was a saloon at the corner of Fourth 
and Berry Streets which was owned by a Dane 

126 



THE LOYAL LEGION BUTTON 127 

whose Irish wife was bartender. It seemed odd 
to me that I chose this saloon to go into, and cer- 
tainly Fate awaited me there, in the person of a 
man about sixty years old. As I entered he was 
in the act of raising a glass of whiskey to his 
lips, and immediately asked me to join him. I 
thanked him, and ordered a glass of steam beer. 

He introduced himself as Captain Glass, now 
master of a bay scow. He was entering into a 
discussion of his merits in the most interested 
possible w r ay, when a man in a Seymour coat 
tightly buttoned to the chin and a cap pulled 
down over his left eye, swaggered into the saloon, 
picked up the Captain's whiskey deliberately 
from the bar, and drank it. The Captain made a 
lunge at him with both fists, and missed him. 

Then the crook, as deliberately as he had drunk 
the whiskey, knocked the old captain down onto 
the sawdust floor. As he lay there I could see 
a little copper button shining in the lapel of his 
pilot-cloth coat. I didn't know then what the 
little copper button meant, but a few minutes 
later I found out that he belonged to the Grand 
Army of the Republic, and had fought in the 
Civil War. 



128 OCEAN ECHOES 

I wasn't going to let the crook get away with 
his rough stuff. One of mother's cardinal prin- 
ciples, in which she had thoroughly trained me, 
was respect for old age. The Irishwoman bar- 
tender dropped my beer, wailing, "Shure, an' 
where's policemen now? Oh you'll niver foind 
thim whin you want thim!" 

I threw off my ragged coat and cap and flung 
them on the bar, then flew at the crook. I was so 
mad with rage that I forgot the training the third 
mate on the lime-juice ship had given me. I was 
knocked down twice before I realized that my 
present style of fighting favored the crook. 
Then I got into position, got my head, and gave 
him the whipping of his crooked life. To finish 
it right I picked him up, and carried him to the 
street and threw him in the gutter. Both my 
eyes were black, my nose was bleeding and my 
lip was cut. 

The old Captain was on his feet again when I 
backed into the saloon, and helped me on with 
my coat. Three teeth were missing from his 
false set — he didn't know whether he had swal- 
lowed them or not ; an egg-shaped bump was also 
developing on his right jaw. Willing as he was 



THE LOYAL LEGION BUTTON 129 

to talk, he found difficulty in moving his jaws. 

We had our drink in peace this time He 
praised me for my good fighting, and the Irish- 
woman, not to be outdone, said : 

"Shure and it is as pretty a piece of fighting 
as iver I see in this bar-room. Drink up, me 
boys, and have another wan on me." 

"What do you do for a living?" asked the Cap- 
tain, steadying his jaw with his hand so that he 
could enunciate. 

"I'm a sailor, looking for a ship." 

"I'll give you a job. Two dollars a day with 
board." 

"All right, I'm your man. But what's the 
work to be?" 

"Sailing with me up the Sacramento River. 
As I said, I'm the Captain of a little schooner, or 
a bay scow, as they call them here. I sail up the 
river, and carry cargo back to the city. Now 
we'll take another drink and go on board." 

We went out, and down to the Mission wharf, 
where the Captain had a small boat moored to 
the slip. We got into her, and I rowed off under 
his direction, out into the bay, where anchor 
lights and side lights were as thick as stars in the 



130 OCEAN ECHOES 

heavens above. They seemed to be welcoming 
me home. 

I rowed past screeching tugs and warning 
ferry-boats and square-rigged ships with raking 
masts that loomed out of the darkness like gigan- 
tic creatures of the deep come out to breathe of 
the night air. 

"That's her over there, pull to your right a 
little." 

I saw the outline of a small two topmast 
schooner riding gracefully in the ripples of an 
ebb-tide. We boarded her, and tied the dinkey 
astern. The Captain invited me into the cabin 
to have a bite to eat before we set sail. The cabin 
was small, and reminded me of the Swede's sloop 
in Glasgow. It was clean, and there was a place 
for everything. The old man had a decided sense 
of order. 

The small stove that was lashed to the bulk- 
head smoked while he was lighting the fire. 
While he was cooking the supper I went up on 
deck to look around my new ship. She was 
about seventy tons, round bottom and center- 
board. The lower masts and topmasts had been 
scraped and a coat of oil rubbed into them. 



THE LOYAL LEGION BUTTON 131 

Their pine brightness gave them a lofty appear- 
ance against the starry horizon. The main boom 
looked large for so small a craft. It projected 
about fifteen feet over the stern. The sails were 
furled in gaskets, and neatly stowed between 
the gaffs and the booms, the decks were clean, 
and all ropes coiled neatly in sailor-fashion. 

"Come on," roared the Captain, with difficulty 
through his aching jaw, "have something to eat. 
It's ready now." 

We munched in silence, I guarding my cut lip 
from the hot Wienerwurst, the Captain nibbling 
at his delicacies with a groan. We washed the 
food down with hot coffee, that seemed to me 
delicious in spite of its leathery taste, and when 
the dishes had been put away went out on deck 
to set the mainsail, heave up the anchor, and 
give her the jib and foresail. So we were off 
with the night breeze, for Clarksburg on the 
Sacramento River, for a cargo of baled hay. 

The Captain was a thorough sailor and knew 
every move of his little craft. He pointed out 
channel lights with one hand while he steered 
with the other. I could hardly see them, for my 
eyes were very sore and swollen. I wondered 



132 OCEAN ECHOES 

how the crook was feeling by that time, and 
whether I should ever see him again. 

There were stretches in the river where the 
wind would be fair, and again we would round a 
bend where it was dead ahead. Here he would 
haul the little schooner sharp onto the wind and 
beat to where the breeze was fair again. In this 
way we made Clarksburg in two days against the 
current, and sailed right up to the bank, drop- 
ping the sails and making her fast to the cotton- 
wood trees, for there was no wharf to tie her to. 

The baled hay we were going to load was piled 
high upon the river bank, and loading it was 
hard work for me, since strength was what I 
used instead of the handy jerk and heave that old 
hands acquire. So that, with working in the hot 
sun all day, fighting mosquitoes at night, and 
drinking muddy river water, I was pretty well 
used up by the time we were loaded. The Cap- 
tain seemed to thrive. He knew the trick of 
loading, and old as he was he could work rings 
around me. 

In three days we had filled the hold and stowed 
most of the deck cargo, which was the greater 
part of the whole. To-morrow we should start 



THE LOYAL LEGION BUTTON 133 

for San Francisco, and that evening the Captain 
asked me to finish loading while he went for a 
walk. 

Abont nine o'clock he came back, roaring 
drunk. He carried a jug which he handed to 
me. 

"Drink some of that, young fellow," he said, 
with great pride. 

"What is it?" I asked. 

"It don't make a damned bit of difference 
what it is. Drink it any way. I'll tell you this 
much," he growled, as he fell over the cabin stool, 
"it's the world's greatest cure for chills 'n' 
fever." 

What chills and fever were I did not know 
then (although I was to find out soon enough), 
nor what the "world's greatest remedy" might 
be. So I said: "Captain, I'll not touch it till 
you tell me what it is." 

He tumbled into his bunk with a groan. Then 
he tried to get out of the bunk and couldn't. 
He murmured softly as his head fell back upon 
the dirty pillow : "Jackass brandy." 

Jackass brandy again! The Devil in our 
midst! None of that for me! I put the jug 



134 OCEAN ECHOES 

away, and taking a blanket and a piece of mos- 
quito netting went up on deck to sleep. 

At four o'clock in the morning the Captain 
came up with a tin dipper to take a drink out 
of the river. Seeing me asleep between the tiller 
ropes he shouted: "What did you do with that 
jug?" 

In vain I urged him not to drink any more. 
He would have it, so I finally told him where it 
was, and he went down to the cabin after it. 

I rolled out of the blanket, took off my clothes, 
jumped overboard, and had a refreshing swim. 
Better than that other time when I had the 
jackass's kick to thank for an icy plunge! 

When I came aboard again, the Captain, ap- 
parently perfectly sober, was elevating the deck- 
platform in line with the load of hay, in order 
to see where to steer. He told me to make the 
coffee while he reefed the fore and mainsail, 
which was necessary with so high a deckload. 

The Captain drank my coffee, but refused to 
eat anything, saying that his stomach was out of 
order, which was not, I thought, to be wondered 
at. At nine o'clock that morning we let go from 
the cottonwoods, set the sails, and drifted away 
with the current. 



CHAPTER XVII 

The Fates Grind the Captain, and Smile and 
Mock at Me 

THE wind was light until we got down to 
where the river grew wider. There the 
breeze and current favored us. The 
Captain refused to let me steer, thinking that I 
knew very little about that kind of sailorizing; 
and I, seeing that the jug of brandy was beside 
him on the platform, knew that it was I who had 
reason to be alarmed, with the whole day before 
us, and him drinking from nine o'clock in the 
morning. 

So the whole day passed, silently, with him 
ever standing at the wheel wavering about the 
jug that went to his lips so often ; with me some- 
times pleading with his unresponsiveness, some- 
times standing alone cursing the kind of man he 
was, and biting back the fears that came crowd- 
ing to my mind. But his power to steer seemed 
independent of his condition, which amazed me. 

135 



136 OCEAN ECHOES 

Since then I have lived to see many men like 
that — surely a token of immortality. 

At about eleven o'clock that night the breeze 
was strong, and as we rounded the curve in the 
river where the wind changed the booms flew over 
on the other tack with a lightning bang. I 
would shout to him to duck his head, which he 
did automatically. If the main boom should 
catch him— well I should hate to think! What 
would become of the schooner, and how should I 
explain? 

"All right, young fellow," he would stutter, as 
he dodged a boom. "I'm a'ri' fashtes' trip ever 
made. So-o-ome fash' schooner !" 

Then he'd take another drink, and the schooner 
would lie over till the baled hay on the lee side 
would drag in the water. 

I went down into the cabin to make coffee. 
I thought it might neutralize the brandy, and 
sober him up a bit. Before I even had the fire 
going in the stove I heard the booms swing over, 
and a deep thud in the cockpit. My heart almost 
stopped beating. I felt as if I were paralyzed. 

There was no doubt in my mind as to what had 
happened. I knew that everything was waiting 



THE FATES SMILE AND MOCK 137 

for me there above: the schooner, in clanger of 
being beached, the Captain at least badly hurt. 
There was no fear now, and I jumped to the deck 
like a man with years of wisdom behind him. I 
was in possession of faculties that I knew I had 
never had before. That is a feeling that only 
comes once, and it never forsakes one in emer- 
gency after that. 

I ran to where I thought the Captain lay. He 
was there, with blood oozing from his ears and 
nose, stricken down at last by the mighty swing 
of the main boom. The boom was whistling 
through the rigging. The schooner wasn't away 
from the river bank two hundred feet. 

Jumping for the wheel platform and climbing 
it, I clutched the wheel, putting it hard down and 
bringing the schooner up into the wind, heading 
upstream. Then, by dropping the peak of the 
mainsail and hauling the jib well to windward, 
I put her out of sailing commission. She would 
drift with the current down the middle of the 
river without danger to herself. Then I ran aft 
again to the Captain. 

When I had carried him down into the cabin, 
I could see by the light of the candle that he was 



138 OCEAN ECHOES 

still breathing. How badly he was hurt I could 
not see. He could not answer when I asked. 

Gently I lifted him into the bunk, and in 
straightening out his legs I discovered that the 
left one was broken below the knee. His face 
was covered with blood, and there was a deep 
scalp wound at the back of his head. His eyes 
were partly open, the pupils turned upwards, and 
the lips a pale blue. 

I made him as comfortable as I knew how, 
bandaged his head, and washed the blood away. 
It seemed that if he died I should be held to 
blame. I knew nothing of his affairs, nor 
even who it was who owned the schooner. What 
if she should be wrecked? The Captain, the 
vessel, and the river were all strangers to me, 
and I was alone with these lifeless forces. 

The flapping of the main peak stirred me to 
action. I jumped to the deck and surveyed the 
vessel and the night. I could barely trace the 
outline of the river banks, but beyond them I 
knew lay uninhabited tule-lands. If there was 
a doctor this side of San Francisco I did not 
know it, nor at the moment did I seem to know 
much of anything at all, since my initiative of a 



THE FATES SMILE AND MOCK 139 

few minutes ago had now given place to a mind 
as variable as the weather-vane upon my father's 
barn. I actually took the time to wish that I 
were at home and asleep in the Irish linen sheets, 
to awake in the morning to find this only a 
dream. 

The wind now increased and drops of rain fell. 
The fresh-water waves lapped in uncanny sound 
along the sides of the schooner, so differently 
from the wash of the great salt ocean. I turned 
and ran back to the cabin, to the semblance of 
human companionship. 

This time the Captain showed signs of con- 
sciousness. His eyes were wide open, and he 
groaned as if in great pain. He might live, I 
thought, and a new hope sprang up within me. 
I would try to sail the schooner to 'Frisco Bay. 
It was a daring thing to do, but. . . . 

I poured some of the muddy river water into 
the Captain's mouth. It gurgled down his 
throat, and noised as though it rippled over a 
shallow fall. 

"How are you now, sir?" 

He looked up at me, and said in a sort of a 
strangling whisper: 



140 OCEAN ECHOES 

"Look out for the schooner, don't bother about 
me." 

"Shall I take her in?" 

He didn't answer, and his head waved to and 
fro. The candle in the bottle candlestick had 
burned low, the dripping wax had formed a tape- 
like ribbon down the side of the bottle. I blew 
Ihe light out and jumped to the deck, set the 
main peak, ran forward and slacked over the 
main jib, and back again to the wheel, when she 
filled away and gathered speed. I put her about, 
and pointed her down the river. 

The wind was strong now, but it favored me, 
and we were off, with God for a pilot, and in me 
the instinct of a sailor. 

It seemed ages till daylight. We had no time, 
and the old nickel-plated watch was in the Cap- 
tain's pocket. I wondered if he were dead, but 
could not leave the wheel to find out. Gusts of 
wind came at times so powerful that it was with 
difficulty that I kept the schooner from turning 
over. When this happened I had to luff so close 
to the river bank that there was danger of run- 
ning into it. 

In the loneliness and darkness I began to pray, 



THE FATES SMILE AND MOCK 141 

and I prayed that night as I have never prayed 
before nor since. I knew my prayers then, 
prayers that my mother had taught me, and 
which to this day I have never forgotten. I can't 
say that I use them much of late years, but I 
would if occasion demanded it. A courage and 
confidence seems to come to me from prayer 
which is not to be produced by all the will power 
in the world. 

Wet from the rain and shivering with cold I 
stood at the wheel and watched the antics of 
the wind and the schooner, until, with the first 
faint streaks of dawn, I saw outlined against a 
hazy hill the outline of San Quentin State Prison. 
I knew it from the Captain's having pointed it 
out to me on our way up the river. 

It was a beacon of hope to me. Across the 
bay ten or twelve miles lay Mission Flats. There 
was plenty of sea-room now. I was tempted to 
let go the wheel and take a look at the Captain, 
but feared that if I should find him dead I should 
be too much alarmed to continue on the schooner. 
Nor could I help him much if he were alive, so 
I concluded to make the best time I could to port. 

About ten o'clock that Monday morning I low- 



142 OCEAN ECHOES 

ered the sails and dropped anchor at Mission 
Plats, and hesitatingly entered the cabin, fearing 
the worst. But there was yet some life in him. 
He was breathing hard, with a hollow, rattling 
sound in his throat. 

I left him, and pulled ashore in the little boat 
that had been towing astern all night. At the 
Dane's saloon in Berry Street, which occurred to 
me as the nearest place to go for help, I found 
Kitty behind the bar. I told her what had hap- 
pened, and that I wanted someone who could 
help me get the Captain to the hospital at once. 
She put her hands on her fat hips, and looking 
out of the window said reflectively : "Shure an' 
I knew that something would happen to poor 
auld Captain Glass." 

Then she spun into action. "Hans, you durty 
loafer, come here," she cried. "There's work for 
you to do." 

Her husband appeared as if by magic. A short 
thickset man he was, coatless, and wearing green 
silk elastic bands with pink bows around his 
sleeves. He called an ambulance and a police- 
man, and I rowed him and the doctor to the 
schooner, where we found the Captain still alive. 



THE FATES SMILE AND MOCK 143 

We moved him to the boat, but he died before 
we had reached the wharf. Who knows but that 
he too, had only clung to life while his responsi- 
bility lasted? One cannot say so with fullest 
confidence, however, for surely he did not have 
the finest idea of duty as far as the jackass 
brandy was concerned. 

The jug, by the way, I took ashore with me, 
and fortunately too, as I had much to explain 
to the police ; so for the first time the jug proved 
to be my friend. 

The agent for the schooner, to whose office I 
presently found my way, listened to my story 
without emotion or comment. When I had fin- 
ished he merely nodded, and said, quite casually : 

"Well, do you think you can run her?" 

"Yes, sir," and my voice broke with eagerness. 
"I think I can." 

"All right then, unload the hay up the bay" (I 
forget the name of the place he told me). "And 
from there go up to Porta Costa and get a load 
of salt." 

That was the last of Captain Glass. Unwept 
and unsung, he passed as many a worthier man 
has done, and his little bronze button went with 



144 OCEAN ECHOES 

him into the humble grave, whose whereabouts I 
do not even know. 

I felt proud of my new position. This as 
sure and good money, upwards of four hur tired 
dollars a*month ; and, being not yet twenty years 
old, and the year one of panic and scarcity of 
work, I thought that it was the sea for a sailor 
and hogs for the landlubber. 

So I went about my business, hiring a man to 
help me, and running the schooner without mis- 
chance for four months. Then fortune, perhaps 
fearing that she had spoiled me, deserted me 
entirely. I got malaria fever. Nothing that I 
could do was of any help, and with the patent 
medicines I bought and the whiskey and quinine, 
the doctor's bills I had to pay, and my despair 
at growing continually weaker, it began to look 
as if I was to leave the venture in worse condi- 
tion than I was when I fought for the Captain 
in the saloon on Berry Street. 

I left the schooner after four months, when 
it became apparent that I must do so to live. 
When I left her I had twelve hundred dollars 
in my pockets. After two months ashore the 
amount had dwindled sadly. I kept writing 



THE FATES SMILE AND MOCK 145 

home how well, and how well fixed I was, for my 
mother's joy at my good fortune was not to be 
lightly destroyed. Her letters were my only 
consolation in those awful weeks. Little did she 
know then what was to pay for being the captain 
of a San Francisco bay schooner ! 

Chills and fever usually hit me in the fore- 
noons, and would last for about three hours on 
alternate days. Between times I was limp, 
dizzy and listless, longing to be quit of life. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

Tops and Bottoms — The Gambler and the 
Gambler's Prey 

ONE afternoon as I was walking along 
the water-front, looking at the ships of 
many nations and wondering if a 
sea-voyage wouldn't help me, a round and red- 
faced man about forty, wearing a straw hat and 
tWeed suit, walked up to me and asked me for 
a light for his cigar. Then he began to talk to 
me, and seemed kind and sympathetic. Little 
did I know that I was talking to one of the worst 
crooks in San Francisco. 

He became communicative, as we stood there, 
and told me how his poor wife was sick up in 
Vancouver, turning from me as he spoke, with 
his handkerchief to his eyes. 

"If I can only get there before she dies!" he 
said. "Every minute is precious, and I am a 
stranger here." 

"I am a stranger, too," I said, "but I ought to 
be able to find a ship for you." I felt very sorry 

146 



THE GAMBLER'S PREY 147 

for this tender-hearted man whose wife was 
dying hundreds of miles away. My own trou- 
bles sank into nothing compared to his. 

He was grateful, and assured me that money 
was nothing to him. He even pulled out a roll 
of bills and asked me to help myself. I, of 
course, refused, for it was a pleasure to help him. 
It never occurred to me to think that the bills 
might be phoney. 

At the Pacific Mail dock I learned that a 
steamer was leaving the following day for Vic- 
toria, B. C, on which he would be able to get 
passage. He said that he would go back later 
for his ticket, and, urging me at least to let him 
treat me to a glass of beer, skilfully guided me 
into the saloon of his choice. 

"Now," said he, on the way, "you must let me 
help you to some money. I doubt if you have 
much." 

"Oh yes, I have a little," I answered, bashfully. 

Quick as a flash he asked me how much I had, 
and I, taken unawares, answered like a fool, and 
told him that I had two hundred and forty dol- 
lars. His eyes sparkled, and his stride length- 
ened. We entered the saloon. 



148 OCEAN ECHOES 

The barroom was small. Its only occupant 
was the bartender, who was long and lanky, with 
a face that might have been chiseled out of Car- 
rara marble, so pale and expressionless it was. 
He was an opium fiend, I discovered later, and 
well known, and sometimes protected by the 
police. 

"What will you have?" he asked, as my seem- 
ing friend and I approached the bar. 

"I will take steam-beer," I said. 

"Ditto for me!" cried the crook, as he flung 
a gold eagle on the bar. 

The beer being served, the bar-tender excused 
himself, to go and get change, he said. I offered 
to pay, but he said that he needed the change 
anyway. I didn't know that this was all a part 
of the piece — that the stage was set for me, and 
that now another character was about to make 
his appearance for my sole benefit. 

As we drank our beer, a door opened from a 
back room into the bar, letting in an elderly man 
whose hair and beard were graying. He wore a 
long linen duster and slouch hat. 

"Have a drink with us, old fellow," said my 
friend. 



THE GAMBLER'S PREY 149 

"No, sir," answered the old man, with a strong 
Western twang, "I buy my own drinks, and pay 
for 'em." 

"Oh, very well, if that's the way you feel about 
it. I'll just shake the dice with you and see who 
pays for the three of us." 

Enter Mr. Hophead, Bartender. 

"Give us the dice," roared the old man. "How 
will we shake?" 

"Tops and bottoms, three dice." 

"Never heard of such a thing," whined the old 
Westerner, "but I'll try anything once, to be 
sociable. Now how does that game o' your'n 



go?" 



I was bristling with interest. This was some- 
thing I had not run across before, and the three 
crooks knew that I was about ready to nibble 
at the bait. I might have been saved, if that 
was all I did, but instead I insisted on swallow- 
ing hook, line, and pole. 

My mother told us children that you can catch 
the small-pox only once, and should you recover, 
you will be forever immune. I know that I have 
helped many young men to steer clear of the 
crooks who infest our cities, because I have my- 



150 OCEAN ECHOES 

self been through the mill of ignorance. For 
this reason, if for no other, I am glad that the 
saloons no longer exist as a legitimate meeting 
and operating ground for crooked men. 

"The game is simple," said my genial friend, 
whose wife was dying in Vancouver. "Take 
these three dice, put them in the box, rattle and 
roll. Guess the numbers on top and bottom, add 
them up, and the one who guesses closest is the 
one who drinks free beer." 

"Gosh a' mighty! I'll take a whack at ye any- 
way," and the old man unbuttoned the long 
duster. I stood by, feeling sorry for myself, that 
I wasn't asked to join in this wonderful game of 
dice. 

The old fellow rattled the bones. 

"Before you throw them on the bar," said my 
companion, with his most winsome smile, "we 
must both make a guess." 

"All right, I'll guess twenty-seven, and, damn 
my old wild skin! I'll bet ye ten dollars and 
beer." 

"You are certainly on," chimed the other, dig- 
ging into his pocket for money. "My guess will 
be twenty-one." 



THE GAMBLER'S PREY 151 

The money was up, and the game was on. 
The hop-head bartender and I looked on wist- 
fully as the dice rolled. 

"Count the numbers," roared old Linen-Duster. 
"And gol-darn ye, count them right !" 

My companion won, and tossing the ten dol- 
lars to me said : 

"Here, take my old hayseed's money. I have 
more than I need." 

"No, no!" I cried, "I wasn't in on your game, 
the money is yours." And I tossed it back again. 
Had I been a little more intelligent I would have 
noticed that the hop-headed bartender sighed 
and the old man retreated through the door by 
which he had entered in a sort of routine way. 
This fact passed me by at the moment, but the 
memory of it certainly taught me something. 

The trap was now ready to spring, and I was 
to be my own hangman. I deserved hanging. 
We hang ourselves many times in our lives with 
the hemp rope of our selfish greed. And that 
day I was no exception. 

My friend turned to me, and smilingly whis- 
pered : "You see how this game works, don't 
you?" He picked up the three dice in his fingers. 



152 OCEAN ECHOES 

"No matter which way you count them, top and 
bottom, there's always twenty-one, seven on each 
dice." 

Surely I was green and dense. 

"I can't understand it yet," said I, getting ter- 
ribly excited. I was afraid that old Linen- 
Duster might come back and spoil my chance of 
ever knowing. Then he explained as if he were 
talking to a child, that if there was a six on 
top, one was always on the bottom ; if four, then 
three on the bottom — always seven, top and 
bottom. 

The old man walked into the bar again, hold- 
ing a fat-looking purse in his hand. "The loss 
of that money doesn't hurt me very much, 
stranger," he said, striding over to the bar. He 
opened the purse. It was full of what appeared 
to be twenty-dollar gold-pieces. It wasn't gold 
at all, I learned afterwards, but mid-winter 
souvenirs of San Francisco. 

"I'll shake with anyone here for three hundred 
dollars, but don't think that if I lose it will break 
me." 

My companion nudged me. "Here's your 
chance," he whispered. "Go after him. Put up 



THE GAMBLER'S PREY 153 

your two hundred and forty, and I'll lend you 
sixty more. It's easy money." 

There was no chance to lose, that I could see. 
I put up my money, all that I had in the world, 
and sixty more. 

"Now you shake the dice,' 1 said my opponent. 
"You certainly look honest to me. Rattle them, 
roll them, throw them on the bar." 

"I'm a-guessing twenty," he continued. 

"I guess twenty-one," I cried; and I wouldn't 
have given one dollar for all of his three hundred, 
so sure was I of winning. Well, I rattled and 
rolled the bones, being sorry for the old man all 
the time. Then I counted them. I counted 
them again. The numbers top and bottom 
amounted to only twenty! 

I was aware of the cynical bartender looking 
at himself in the mirror, smiling at the sucker, 
who like the dreamer, pervades society from high- 
est to lowest strata. I was aware that the old 
man had quietly pocketed my earnings, leaving 
me only a few coppers to my name. I saw the 
other crook deliberately slide out of a side door. 
I felt myself to be alone, with possibility of ven- 
geance gone from me. Still I stood in the bare 



154 OCEAN ECHOES 

and silent room, staring, staring at the dice on 
the mahogany bar, knowing at last the trick of 
substitution that had taken from me all I had. 

The psychology of being a good loser is the 
feeling that the hurts of yesterday may be the 
cause of winning to-morrow's fight. I went out 
of that saloon as if I were bent on urgent busi- 
ness, and I was. By now it was plain enough 
to me that my time would be wasted in seeking 
redress. The matter of the moment was food, 
shelter, and occupation. I had not even time 
to think of malaria and the chills that were sure 
to get me soon. The past was obscure with the 
dawn of the morrow. 



CHAPTER XIX 

A Short Chapter, Healed Wounds, and 
a Queer Sea-Captain 

THE cream-colored November sun had only 
a little way to go before night swept in 
his wake. I walked along the water- 
front and watched the ships swinging limply to 
the undertow. That same evening I found a 
ship, the barque Ferris S. Thompson, bound for 
Seattle for coal, and back again for San Fran- 
cisco. 

This good luck was due to a sailor, unknown 
to me, whom I had befriended when I was master 
of the bay schooner. I was unloading coal one 
afternoon in San Francisco. He came on board 
and asked me if I could give him some work 
to do. 

"I'm sorry," said I ; "I can't give you work." 

He turned away, and without a murmur 

walked ashore. I stopped shoveling coal and 

gazed after him. Then I thought that it wasn't 

so long ago that I had been just like him — with 

155 



156 OCEAN ECHOES 

no money, no friends, no home, and the cruel 
feeling that nobody cared. I knew that I had 
gold in my pocket, and I wondered how long I 
should have it. Then I called after him: 
"Hello ! I want to see you." 

"You're broke," said I. 

"Yes, and hungry into the bargain." 

"Here's ten dollars for you." 

He thanked me with his Norwegian accent and 
walked away, and I went on shoveling coal. 

That was five months before, and this evening, 
from where he stood on the forecastle-head of 
the barque, he recognized me on the wharf. He 
was the second mate, and the barque needed one 
man. I got the job. I was richly paid for the 
small service I had rendered him. 

One usually is richly paid. Kindness to 
others is not only a pleasure that rich and poor 
alike can have, but frequently it is more than 
its own reward. I could cite many instances. 

Years later, at a time when I had plenty of 
money, I was walking one afternoon in Stanley 
Park, Vancouver. A young man was sitting on 
a bench looking pale and hungry, and there were 
lines of sadness in his face. 



A QUEER SEA-CAPTAIN 157 

"What's your trouble?" I asked. "Tell me. 
I have noticed you sitting here for two hours. 
Perhaps I can help." 

He cleared his throat, and a delicate smile 
came into his face. 

"I'm broke," said he, "and hungry. I've been 
sleeping in the park for the last three nights, and 
I'm just about sick." 

"How did you get in for this?" 

"I put what money I had into a little mine up 
the country here," waving his hand toward 
the north. "I thought there was more to it than 
there was. There was nothing there." 

I paid his room and board for a week, and gave 
him twenty dollars. 

Years later I met him again. This time it was 
I who was down and out, and sick with rheuma- 
tism, left from the typhoid fever which had me 
in its grip when the Goldfield smash stripped me 
of a fortune. 

In the little town of Manhattan, Nevada, I 
met him. I had been riding on a lumber wagon 
most of the day trying to get there. Five miles 
out of town the wagon broke down, and crippled 
as I was, I had to walk that distance. I didn't 



158 OCEAN ECHOES 

know a soul there. Imagine my surprise when I 
walked into town, sick, broke, and hungry, to 
find the man I had helped in Stanley Park. 

He recognized me at once, and my condition 
also. 

"Now," he said, "taking me kindly by the arm, 
"it's my turn to help you." He led me to his 
tent, got a doctor for me, and kept me there until 
I got well. 

Then there was the Chinaman on the Frazer 
River who ran the fan -tan house at Stevestown. 
Grateful for my rescue of him from the three 
fishermen who were beating him up one night as 
I passed his door, he never forgot me. Later I 
met him in Vancouver when I was at a street 
corner wondering what to do next. Luck had 
been very bad. I saw him walking along on the 
other side of the street. He did not seem to see 
me. He walked by, crossed the street, came up 
by my side, walked up to me with outstretched 
hand. "How you do?" said he. 

He gave me the usual limp oriental handshake, 
passed along as if he had never seen me, without 
waiting for a word, and left in my hand three 
twenty-dollar gold-pieces. 



A QUEER SEA-CAPTAIN 159 

After such experiences one finds that there is 
indeed truth in "bread upon the waters." And 
one is both inspired and made reckless by this 
sure knowledge of the subconscious rescue work 
which seems invariably to save us from disaster, 
through some other person. The crumbs we scat- 
ter come back to us in well-baked loaves. 

As to the barque Ferris S. Thompson, from 
which I have strayed so far: the voyage was a 
very long one for so short a distance. The 
reason for this delay lay with the captain. 
He was a State of Maine man, and old at that. 
I believe the only worry he had in his life at sea 
was due to an inborn fear of steamships. He 
felt that he was always in danger of being run 
down by one of them. 

He held high regard for sailing-ship masters, 
but none for the captains of steamers. Even in 
daylight if he saw a steamer he would alter his 
course and steer away from the distant smoke. 
When night shut in there was misery for every- 
one on board. If he saw a masthead light, re- 
gardless of its position, he would roar : 

"Tack ship, stand by headsails, weather fore 
and main braces. Har-r-r-d a le-e-eee !" 



160 OCEAN ECHOES 

Around we'd go on another tack. He'd stand 
trembling on the poop until the steamer's light 
faded into the distance. Three months vanished 
on that voyage, although the distance round-trip 
was a thousand miles. 

Finally, after dodging, it seemed, every 
steamer that plied the coast-line of the North 
Pacific, we reached San Francisco. What a wel- 
come met us! When the tug-boat breasted the 
barque alongside the wharf, the managing owner 
was there. 

When we were within hailing distance of the 
owner his voice reached out to us, and it seemed 
to me to have about the same effect on all on 
board — as though we were caught aback in a 
squall. 

"Get off that ship, everyone of you. I don't 
even want you to make her fast to the wharf!" 
Then, his eyes wandering aft to where the old 
State of Maine captain stood : "Where have you 
been, to China? Gone three months instead of 
six weeks ! ! ! " The language that followed was 
of that rare order known only to masters, mates 
and owners. 

He paid us all off then and there. There were 



A QUEER SEA-CAPTAIN 161 

no good wishes for our future, for to him each 
and all of us were equally guilty The old cap- 
tain took his medicine like the rest of us. What 
did he care for the abuse of an owner, compared 
to the sharp stem of a steamer? 

But just by changing ships he couldn't get 
away from the steamers. Five years later I was 
mate on a ship bound north for Seattle, and we 
passed the barque Oakland. This same old cap- 
tain commanded her — but not that day. He, 
with the crew, had taken to the boats twenty-four 
hours before. The barque, manless, was left to 
the mercy of wind and wave. 

I pleaded with my captain to let me take her, 
and sail her into Puget Sound, for she was 
loaded with lumber, and I felt sure that I could 
salvage her, although she was water-logged. My 
captain would not hear of it, and the salvage fell 
to an ocean-going tug which chanced upon her, 
towed her to port, and received one hundred and 
twenty thousand dollars for her. I have often 
regretted that I did not defy the captain, and 
sail her to port or die in the attempt. 

The Captain and crew were picked up off 
Cape Disappointment, the story being that the 



162 OCEAN ECHOES 

barque Oakland was abandoned because she was 
so leaky. But I knew, and the captain knew 
that other reason— STEAMERS ! 



CHAPTER XX 

The Hare-lipped Captain — Worcestershire 
Sauce and Gruel 

I'M going to take a liberty, and bunch to- 
gether seven years of sea experience from 
the time of my discharge from the F. S. 
Thompson, putting these memories, as it were, 
into a ground-swell from the deep, and letting 
them wash ashore, and, from amongst the kelp in 
the nooky inlet where the driftwood lies, gather- 
ing together the pieces that are worth salvaging, 
carrying them to the high-water mark, and drop- 
ping them there. 

These seven years had crowded out the over- 
serious thoughts of youth, and developed in me 
the more harmonious side of the man. I could 
laugh at life and its drawbacks now. If I hap- 
pened to be without a ship, or without money in 
my pocket, I felt that it was all in the day's work, 
and so lost nothing through worry. The smiling 
seas were mine to-day — lee shores belonged to 
yesterday. 

163 



164 OCEAN ECHOES 

I had a great ambition to become a master of 
ships, as well as a master of men; but I had to 
wait, first to become a citizen of the country, and 
then to get the necessary sea experience to 
qualify. Nautical astronomy and the rules of 
sailing I was thoroughly familiar with. Long 
before I became an officer aboard ship, I 
once with this knowledge saved a ship from 
going on the rocks. I was still a sailor in the 
forecastle. 

I was in a Puget Sound port, and money was 
getting low with me when I met the hare-lipped 
captain. He was loading lumber for San Fran- 
cisco. He held a half-interest in a three topmast 
schooner, the other half being held by a Dutch- 
man in San Francisco who ran a coffee-royal 
house for the benefit of sailors who liked to mix 
brandy with the Dutchman's black coffee. 

When I met the Captain he was coming out of 
a saloon on his way to the schooner. He was 
making short tacks on the sidewalk, and had 
great difficulty in shaping a straight course for 
the wharf. 

"Do you need any sailors?" I asked him. 

"I do," he said, with a hiccough; "but if I 



WORCESTERSHIRE SAUCE 165 

stop now to tell you what I want, I'll fall down. 
Come on, take me by the arm, and steer me to the 
schooner." 

The job was not an easy one. He was heavy, 
and not easy to keep on an even keel. But I got 
him on board, and in his cabin he invited me to 
remain for supper. It was unusual for a sailor 
to eat with the master of a ship, but I allowed for 
his condition, for when a man is drunk he will 
take up with anyone who will listen to his 
boasting. 

The ship's cook, who had one eye and a droop- 
ing mustache, brought in the supper, which he 
spread noisily, and with a nervous glance at me 
bounded forward to the galley. I learned after- 
ward that even the mates were afraid to face the 
captain that night. 

It seemed to me, as I sat opposite to him, that 
if things didn't go right he would be a hard man 
to handle. But he treated me very well, and 
told me to come down in the morning, and he 
would ship me as a sailor. 

Now it seemed to me, who had so often been 
a victim of leaky ships, that I asked a justifiable 
question : 



166 OCEAN ECHOES 

"How is this ship for leaking, Captain?" But 
it proved to be my undoing. 

"What did you say?" he inquired fiercely. 
"Just say that again. Just say that again, if 
you dare. My ship leaky!" And without hesi- 
tation, with a single gesture, he picked up and 
flung at me a large platter of fried steak, just 
missing my face. His language was startling 
even to me, and before I could move he was up 
and peeling off his coat. 

Discretion seemed the thing just then, and I 
made a leap for the deck, where the two mates 
stood snickering at me as I shot by them to the 
wharf. I did manage to call to the mate, "I'll 
be with you in the morning, sir," before I ducked 
behind a lumber pile. None too soon, for the 
Captain's head showed above the companion- 
way. He told the poor mates what he thought 
of them, and treated them to the language in- 
tended for me. 

Bright and early next morning I was aboard 
the hare-lipped Captain's ship. He didn't re- 
member having hired me, but hired me over 
again, and I helped load ship for the four days 
we were in port. The Captain was drunk all 



WORCESTERSHIRE SAUCE 167 

the time, and was very disagreeable, especially to 
the mate. The result was that the mate left, 
and we sailed without any first officer. 

There were six men in the fo'c'sle, big, raw- 
boned, Scandinavian sailors, and the second mate 
was apparently a good sailor, but not a navi- 
gator. Plying in coastwise trade he did not re- 
quire a second mate's license. Two days out at 
sea, the Captain, who did all his drinking ashore, 
and did not carry rum with him, became deliri- 
ous for the want of it. He was having domestic 
trouble with one of his lady-loves. I thought 
whoever she was she could not be as bad as he, 
and Heaven help her! 

The sailors were uneasy and scented disaster. 
When the topsails blew away, they held a con- 
sultation, and decided that the Captain must 
be locked up if we were ever to reach port. But 
the question was, who amongst us had the nerve 
to seize him and tie him up. 

The cook was called into conference. The 
others thought that he, being in close touch with 
the raving Captain, could coax him into his cabin 
and quickly lock the door. I'll never forget the 



368 OCEAN ECHOES 

expression on the cook's face when this proposi- 
tion was made to him. 

As I said before, he had one eye. The loss of 
this member had a tendency to protrude the good 
one, which seemed to bulge out on his cheek. 
He had a three-day growth of sandy beard. The 
drooping mustache, which was about three 
shades darker, covered his mouth, and when he 
spoke, it was self-consciously, with one dough- 
spattered finger to his mouth. But there was 
nothing hesitating about his words. He could 
not, and would not, lock up the Captain. 

It was six o'clock in the afternoon of the third 
day at sea. The wind was coming stronger, and 
the spanker should be reefed. The topsails, what 
was left of them, were flying in long strips at 
the masthead. The Captain was sitting on a 
mooring bitt, alongside the man at the wheel, 
counting and counting something on his fingers. 
Often he would spring to his feet, clawing at 
some imaginary bug crawling on his coat-collar. 
No one dared to speak to him, least of all the 
second mate. He was doubly scared — of the 
Captain, and of what was going to happen to 
the ship; for he knew enough to dread many 



WORCESTERSHIRE SAUCE 169 

things, and not enough to save the ship from 
one of them. 

Suddenly, and quietly, the Captain sprang for 
the helmsman, and started to beat him up. He 
was a stout man, but the attack was too sudden, 
and he had no show at all. He began to cry 
murder. 

Two Swedish sailors and I went on the run 
for the poop-deck. We didn't get there a mo- 
ment too soon. We pulled the Captain away 
from the poor helmsman, just in time to prevent, 
him throwing him overboard. Then he turned 
on me with unabated fury. But the three of us 
soon mastered him, and buckled him down the 
companionway and into his room, where we 
locked him in, after first removing anything that 
might injure him. He was raving and prancing 
like a wild animal. 

On deck I asked the second mate if he knew 
his position of ship, or where he was on the ocean. 
He didn't know any more about it than did the 
sailors in the forecastle. 

We called a council again, and I told the 
crew that while I held no license I felt sure 
that I could make San Francisco, since I 



170 OCEAN ECHOES 

could navigate the ship. They agreed that 
I should command her, and I took the Cap- 
tain's sextant. The following day I got our 
position, and headed her for the Golden 
Gate. 

For two days the Captain howled and raged. 
He was so vicious that we dared not go into his 
room, but fortunately his anger was misdirected, 
and he did not try to escape. The cook fed him 
through the port-hole, with a long-handled dip- 
per full of gruel, strongly flavored with Lea and 
Perrin's sauce. When I asked why he did this, 
he laughed at my ignorance of the sobering-up 
properties of this sauce. I discovered later that 
longshoremen and mule-skinners have also dis- 
covered this valuable secret. 

After the second day the Captain grew better 
and slept more. On the sixth day we sailed into 
San Francisco Bay, and I was just about to come 
to anchor, when he demanded to be released, and 
to be allowed on the deck of his own schooner. 
I refused his demand, thinking that he was weak, 
and should have a doctor. Without more argu- 
ment he withdrew his head from the porthole, 
threw his strength against the door, smashed it 



WORCESTERSHIRE SAUCE 171 

to splinters, and came up on deck as if nothing 
had happened. 

He surveyed the harbor with a sweep of his 
eye, and inquired with a flame of oaths what I 
was doing with his ship. 

"I'm going to anchor her," I said, frightened. 

"Never mind the anchor, I'm going to take her 
alongside the wharf. Lower the jibs down and 
drop the spanker." 

I was about to protest, thinking that if he 
tried to sail alongside the wharf he would tear 
the sides out of her. But discipline held me in 
its iron grip, and I wondered if really he could 
possibly do it. He did. He sailed up to Mission 
Flats, and abreast the Fourth Street bridge. He 
pointed the schooner in towards the wharf as if 
she were alone on the water. 

There were tug-boats, ferry-boats, bay-scows, 
and sailing-craft of all kinds and descriptions 
tooting and shouting and screaming for the right- 
of-way. Our Captain if he saw them did not 
notice them, but took his wheel, and with his 
eye on the wharf sailed in. It so happened that 
there was a vacant berth at the end of the pier, 
ahead of which lay a number of Greek fishing- 



172 OCEAN ECHOES 

boats. They saw us coming, and got out of the 
way like a floek of sheep, for it looked as if there 
would be a nasty crash. 

"Drop the peak of the fore and mainsail, and 
let the jib go by the run !" shouted the Captain. 
When this was done the wind fluttered out of 
our sails, and the schooner crept lazily in, gliding 
alongside, harmlessly squashing the barnacles on 
the piles, to the amazement of the crew, and the 
crowd gathered on the dock. 

"Make her fast, and lower the fore and main- 
sail. Then get ashore and get your money," 
ordered the Captain; and that was his acknowl- 
edgement to us for our help and our silence. 

But in the Dutchman's coffee house where we 
were paid off, we were all friends together, and 
there the Captain was once more able to get 
drunk, as drunk could be. When I left them the 
Captain was surrounded by his loving crew, who 
chanted his praises in cognac whispers, while the 
cook reclined against the hare-lipped one, with 
one arm entwined about his neck. 



CHAPTER XXI 
Salmon Fishing, Citizen and Mate 

IT was now a little over four years that I had 
been away from home. I was twenty-two 
years old. In less than a year I should be 
a citizen of the United States of America, and 
with that would come promotion from the fore- 
castle. 

My letters came regularly from Ireland, always 
with my mother's thoughtfulness for her son. 
There were many questions to answer. Did I 
keep my feet dry, and did I wear red flannels to 
keep the rheumatism away? Always her letters 
contained the assurance that her prayers were 
being said for me, and through them she 
felt sure that no harm could befall me. Some- 
how I began to feel so, too; so many adventures 
did I have, and narrow escapes. I cannot but 
believe that some good force works to preserve 
those of us who are innocent, or not too bad, 
though what that force is I cannot pretend to 
say. 

173 



174 OCEAN ECHOES 

One instance more of this I may mention here. 
Some months after I took the hare-lipped Cap- 
tain's schooner to port, I found myself on the 
Fraser River, British Columbia. It was sum- 
mer, the salmon season was on, I got a boat and 
a net from a cannery, and went gill-netting for 
salmon. 

A young married man, who had a wife and 
child living in New Westminster, was my boat- 
puller. He was a sober, steady, hard-working 
man. It was towards the close of the salmon 
run, and we were thinking of giving up fishing, 
that is, it would hardly pay for the physical 
wear and tear with so few salmon in the river. 
But he prevailed on me to fish for another week, 
and I consented. 

That Sunday afternoon before we put out to 
fish, I took a nap, and when I awoke I was 
somewhat troubled by a dream I had had. I 
dreamed that I saw my dead self being lowered 
into a grave, and I was amused at the mourners, 
as I stood there by the grave, watching them 
cover my dead self up. They didn't use earth to 
cover the coffin. Each one had a pail, and in the 
pail was water, and this they dumped into the 



SALMON FISHING 175 

open grave. When it was full to the top, the 
water-carriers disappeared. 

I told this to my boatman. He enjoyed the 
story, and we had a good laugh, especially at 
the water part of it. 

"Come on," said he then, "let us go down and 
get the net off the rock and into the boat. When 
that is done it will be time to go out to fish." 

The law in British Columbia is that there shall 
be no nets in the water from sunrise Saturday 
until sunset Sunda}" evening. When we were 
ready, we put up the sail and sailed out into 
the Gulf. When the sun went down I cast the 
net, intending as usual to drift all night, pick 
it up in the morning light, and sail home with 
the salmon to market. 

This night it was different. With the after- 
glow of the sun came black clouds, and the night 
set in like a monstrous shadow, shutting out all 
but the aurorean gleam from the lighthouse. 
Unushered, the wind came in stormy gusts, and 
lashed the sea to rage. That was the end for 
seventy-two fishermen that night. Thirty-six 
seaworthy boats went down before its hungry 
onslaught like cockle-shells. 



176 OCEAN ECHOES 

I gathered the net aboard, hoping to make 
Stevestown at the mouth of the Fraser River 
before the worst of the storm overtook me. Even 
before I got the net in it was hard to keep the 
boat from turning over. She was a large fishing- 
boat, twenty-four feet overall, with a six-foot 
beam, a round bottom, and bowed at both ends. 
Yet that night she had all the motion of a canoe 
adrift in a waterfall. 

I put the mast up, and tied two reefs in the 
sail. I caught a glimmer from the lighthouse, 
and shaped a course for the river. There were 
dangers I knew, in crossing the bars, shallow 
with the sea running wild. Should I strike one 
I knew that nothing could save me. 

My dream of the afternoon appeared to me 
vividly, and I crowded it away, for it was my 
intention to fight the wind and wave for the 
injustice of their sudden attack. I ground my 
teeth and grabbed the tiller, eased the sheet, and 
we were away to safety or death. 

I called to my boat-puller to get forward to 
the bow, and keep a sharp lookout to avoid run- 
ning into another fisherman. The wind and 



SALMON FISHING 177 

waves fairly lifted the boat out of the water, 
we made such speed. One could scarcely see a 
finger before one's eyes. The danger of allowing 
the boat to broach to the sea was as great as 
striking a sandbar, and between the two dangers, 
and with my dream pushing into my mind, I 
sailed on. 

Half an hour later there were screams, dying 
screams, screams from drowning men : the call 
to Buddha from the sinking Japanese; the wail 
for the Happy Hunting-Ground from the Indian, 
and the shouted word from the white man to his 
Christian God — these louder than the elements 
of the night. 

To sail on amidst capsized fishing-boats was 
playing quoits with fate. Eealizing this new 
danger, I called out to my boat-puller to look out 
for himself. I determined to come up into the 
wind and sea. If I could, my best chance lay in 
the open sea. If not — well there would be one 
more fishing-boat lost. 

I hauled in the sheet, and put the tiller over. 
Like a race-horse she rounded into the waves, 
swamped herself full to the gunwales, but did 



178 OCEAN ECHOES 

not, as I expected, turn bottom up. I called to 
the boat-puller : "Throw the anchor overboard." 
I got no response. 

Fearing the worst, that he had been pitched 
into the sea, I repeated the order. Then I real- 
ized that I was alone, and my heart began to 
pound. I realized that I, too, was doomed. But 
the time had not come yet to pray. If I could 
manage to get forward and get the anchor out 
she'd swing head on to the storm. This would 
help to prolong the end, for we carried a sea- 
anchor with seventy-five feet of rope. 

The water in the boat was nigh up to my waist. 
I wallowed through it, and got out the anchor. 
Then I heaved the net overboard, and bailed the 
water out, and she swung bow on to the waves 
with the strain on the anchor rope. I bailed, 
and the storm roared, unceasingly, until day- 
break. 

With the morning sun came calmer waves. 
The wind took flight to some distant sea, and I 
gave thanks for another day. Could it be 
mother's prayers that saved a son, or just a freak 
of fate? The bloated bodies of seventy-two 
fishermen beached on the sands. I hunted for 



SALMON FISHING 179 

mj* puller and found him, took the body to the 
wife who loved him, and to the child who chat- 
tered and smiled and wondered why Daddy slept 
so long. I had made some money fishing that 
I need not use, and the widow thanked me. 

A few months later I got my citizenship papers. 
I had been in the United States five years, from 
1894 to 1899, when I graduated forever from the 
fo'c'sle, with the receipt of my naturalization 
papers. I took an examination and passed for 
mate. 

My first ship as an officer was bound for Aus- 
tralia. I knew all the tricks of sailors, their 
hatreds, their sympathies, their childish joys and 
youthful egotisms. The old saying holds good 
in every instance: "You've got to camp with a 
man to know him." 

It is a common saying at sea, especially 
among the officers and masters who graduated 
from apprentice seamen to their commands, that 
few men who start in the forecastle ever reach 
the bridge. But I am convinced that those of 
the men who work their way up know how to 
handle men to get the best work out of them, 
if they have the mind to. 



180 OCEAN ECHOES 

Kindness and appreciation is what they re- 
quire. You've got to know them and be one of 
them, listen to their petty grievances, praise 
them even when they make mistakes. Then 
there is nothing they won't do for you. 

And I have found out that this rule works as 
well on land as on the sea. The man who is not 
in close touch with his employees is usually in 
trouble with them. Often the master prefers to 
remain aloof from his men, issuing his orders 
through some prejudiced superintendent or fore- 
man, and trusting to welfare-work to stand for 
good-will. If he did not do this, there would 
be fewer unions in the world to-day. 

During the World War I was a superintendent 
at the Submarine Boat Corporation's yard — the 
second largest shipyard in the United States. 
We had as many as twenty-five thousand men 
working there. It was astonishing the number 
of men who were fired every day, it seemed to 
me for no other reason than that their foreman 
did not understand or want to know them; and 
the men they got in return were worse than those 
they had sent away. For more than a year as 
Superintendent of Ship Eigging and Outfitting 



SALMON FISHING 181 

I had no occasion to fire a man, and all that time 
my department was above standard in efficiency. 
To choose a man you have got to know him, and 
he should be treated like a man, once you put 
him to work. 

The voyage to Australia was a pleasant one, 
although it seemed disappointing to the Captain. 
He shipped me as mate more on my physical 
appearance, than for any other reason, for he 
wanted a man who could fight. I understood 
from the ship's carpenter, who had sailed many 
voyages with him, that there was usually trouble 
on board his ship. That voyage there was no 
fighting and very little growling, and yet the men 
were the average tj^pes that are picked up in any 
seaport. 

"Don't get too friendly with them," the Cap- 
tain told me. "I know them. One of these days 
they will be kicking you into the lee scuppers. 
That's the way they repay kindness." 

"We'll see," said I, and dismissed the subject. 
I was young, but I knew the sailor's tempera- 
ment, and when I spoke to them it was to call 
them by their names, and not by some manu- 
factured names with an oath. 



182 OCEAN ECHOES 

The crew was musical. There were a baritone, 
trombonist, and cornettist in the forecastle. 
One of them made a triangle out of a chain hook, 
and the orchestra was complete. During the 
dog-watches in the tropics, and on Sundays, we 
played new pieces. At times I would spell the 
cornet-player off, and play with them. 

It was all a bit hard on the Captain, who had 
no ear for music, and so made no allowance for 
varied harmonies. When the notes reached him 
on the poop deck he'd pull at his pipe and pull 
his beard, and pace the deck on the double- 
quick. One evening while we were sailing south 
of the Samoas, we ran into a head wind. It 
seemed unusual. The Southeast Trades should 
have held for at least another five degrees farther 
South. 

We were playing that evening when the wind 
hauled ahead, and pushed the ship off her course. 
The Captain came running from the poop for- 
ward. "Now see what you've done," he roared. 
"Cut that music out, and cut it out for good. 
I knew something would happen with that clab- 
bering going on." 

He said a whole lot more, words that were 



SALMON FISHING 183 

jerky and explosive. He blamed the forecastle 
orchestra for the head wind, and the instruments 
had to be put away,. The sailor who beat time 
on the chain-hook triangle hung it up over his 
bunk for his socks to dry on. That settled music 
for that voyage. They wouldn't even sing a cap- 
stan chantey when they were heaving up the 
anchor. It took nine months to make the voyage, 
and at the end I left the ship and so did the 
crew. It would have been cheaper in the end to 
have kept us contented with a little innocent 
music. 



CHAPTER XXII 
Chapter One on the Psychology of Captains 

CAPTAINS of sailing-ships have time to 
be superstitious, and sometimes they are 
more so than sailors before the mast. 
While they are supposed to have a higher degree 
of intelligence, they come in contact with more 
traditions of the sea, and it seems are very sus- 
ceptible to them. 

Once I was mate with a Swede captain who 
believed that to see whales was a bad omen; he 
claimed that gales of wind would follow, and I 
have to admit that when I was with him this was 
more or less true. 

Another, a Dane, believed that when he 
dreamed of white horses we were sure to have 
a blow, and as he seemed always to be dreaming 
of them and predicting disaster in the mildest of 
weather, I did not stay long with him. There 
was no barometer on board, nor would he allow 
any, for some reason known best to himself. 

184 



CAPTAIN PSYCHOLOGY 185 

I made two voyages with another old twisted 
warp of a man, before we finally lost the ship. 
He was afraid of his shadow. He would never 
allow another shadow to cross it. To avoid this 
gave him some nifty footwork to do, especially 
around noon when we would be taking the sun 
together, and I out of devilment would throw 
my shadow across his. 

"See what you are doing now," he would roar, 
"what can you expect with this kind of work 
going on?" 

I'd excuse myself, and separate the shadows, 
but he would be deeply depressed for a long time. 

He had queer ideas about booms and ladders, 
being afraid to pass under them, and so kept 
continually dodging; and when the sea was afire 
with phosphorescent glow, and the spray would 
lift up tiny diamond-blue bulbs to the deck, he'd 
murmur : "Yes, by Heavens, there's something 
back of this !" 

The ship he commanded was old, and, by rea- 
son of its lack of buoyancy, only fit to carry 
lumber, which can stand more water than any 
other cargo. We were loading at Garden City, 
Oregon, and had just shipped a new crew, when 



186 OCEAN ECHOES 

the men discovered they were aboard a leaky ship. 

They beat it ; the next crew also ; and before 
we had the ship loaded we had had six crews. 
The last, you might say, was shanghaied. These 
men came from Portland, Oregon, and were lime- 
juice sailors. The moment they put their bags 
on board the tugboat pulled us out to anchor. 
There we could hold them until we were ready 
for sea. 

When the anchor was down I called on them 
to pump her out, saying to encourage them : "She 
hasn't been pumped out for several days, and you 
may find a little water in her." 

This wasn't true, for while we were at the 
wharf I had kept two longshoremen busy pump- 
ing at her most of the time, and it was hard 
even to get them to do it, so bad was her repu- 
tation. 

There was a tall slim Irishman in the crew, 
who became at once spokesman for the others. 

"Ah," said he, with a smile, "and shure, it 
won't take us no time at all, at all, to pump 
her out for ye." 

I smiled too, a different smile, and looked out 
at the bar that we were soon to cross on our way 



CAPTAIN PSYCHOLOGY 187 

to the open sea. The lime-juice crew pumped for 
an hour with never a suck from the pump. I 
could hear them growling and swearing. Pres- 
ently the Irishman stuck his head above the deck- 
load and shouted to me : 

"Bejasus and has the bottom dropped out of 
her? Is it a ship we're on, at all, at all, or is it 
just a raft of lumber? The divil himself 
wouldn't go to sea on her !" 

It wasn't so much what the Irishman said that 
made me roar with laughter, it was the expres- 
sion on his face — that of an abandoned castaway ; 
and I nearly lost all my new-made dignity of 
coastwise mate then and there. 

Struggling for seriousness, I told him I 
thought that the little water that washed in the 
bilges was a small matter, and that a few strokes 
more of the pump would settle it. He crawled 
down to the pump again, but not before he had 
said a few words : 

"It's perpitool motion ye'd ought to have on 
the pumps. As God is me judge, I balave ye 
could see the fish in the ocean through th' bottom 
av her !" 

They were still pumping when the superstiti- 



188 OCEAN ECHOES 

ous captain came aboard. His expression was 
a good deal like the Irishman's, clabby and 
dearing. 

"Did you hear the news before you left the 
wharf?" he murmured nervously. 

"Hear what?" I asked. 

He put his hand to his mouth. "Hush, listen ; 
the rats left the ship this morning between four 
and five o'clock." 

"Did you see them leave?" I asked, trying hard 
to suppress a giggle. 

"I didn't, but there were others that saw them. 
Swarming off in droves they were. . . ." 

"Oi'll tell yez," came a furious voice as the 
Irishman's head appeared again, "Oi'll tell yez 
again and once for all, there isn't any bottom in 
the bloody auld hooker. It's murrder ye'd be 
doing to have daycint min sign articles on a 
rotten auld hulk widout ribs or annything to 
hauld her together !" 

The Captain wet his lips with his long red 
tongue. He looked at me sort of puzzled, then 
his eyes shifted to the Irishman, and he sighed 
heavily, and self-consciously. For a moment 
there was a lull in the conversation — even the 



CAPTAIN PSYCHOLOGY 189 

pumps stopped. The breakers that broke on the 
sprits of the bar had an echo-gnawing sound, 
noticeable in that moment of intense rat-super- 
stition. Then the Irishman spoke again, 
solemnly : 

"There isn't wan of us will sail wit yez. We're 
sailors, ivery wan av us, but behivins we're not 
web-footed. Did yez hear that now? And the 
divil foot will we put on your ship !" 

The ultimatum seemed to be as terrible to the 
captain as if it had been possible for the crew 
to do otherwise than sail, seeing that they were 
already on the way. 

"Is she leaking any worse?" he asked. 

"I think she is," I answered cruelly, at the 
same time turning my back on the Irishman, for 
it would never do to let him hear about the rats. 

"I know where it is," and the captain looked 
wildly about him. "It's that damned stern-post 
again. I've been calking it off and on for the 
last ten years." 

He removed his hat and rubbed his bald head. 
He seemed to be thinking deeply. There was 
reason to think. Undoubtedly the rats knew 
about that old leak in the stern-post. Why then 



190 OCEAN ECHOES 

should they desert their old nests after all these 
years? It was an old leak with a new aspect 

The lime-juice crew had stopped pumping, and 
stood around the mainmast talking, their voices 
having a raspy twang. 

Toot, toot, toot! came the tugboat, none too 
soon. 

At once the Captain put ship's dignity into a 
bad situation. 

"I'll put her on the dry-dock next trip," he 
promised, "but we'll have to get to sea with her 
now. I'll talk to the crew." 

He walked forward bravely, for he didn't want 
to go to sea any more than the crew did, but for 
him it was a choice between the risk and giving 
up his command, not to mention undergoing the 
jibes of other captains, his drinking-mates ashore. 
With the crew it was simply risk, and it is always 
a pity to take discontented men forcibly to sea. 

He talked to them kindly, singing the praises 
of his ship, and their argument was fortunately 
cut short by the tug-boat captain, who unfeel- 
ingly demanded why he should be forced to wait 
all day on a bunch of good-for-nothing loafers. 

So we heaved up the anchor, taking the tow- 



CAPTAIN PSYCHOLOGY 191 

line aboard, and soon the tug-boat let go of us. 
We put sail on her and headed for the open 
sea. 



CHAPTER XXIII 
More Psychology and Some Action 

WE were bound for Kedondo, southern 
California. It was the month of 
January, and cold and snappy. 
Having possession of the sounding-rod, I was in 
a position to encourage the crew, though they 
received my well-meant promptings with sarcasm 
and scorn. They pumped, I pumped, the Captain 
pumped, and even the cook, in intervals of cook- 
ing; we pumped, and pumped, and pumped. 
We did manage to keep her down to about three 
feet of water in the hold. 

Finally there came a night when the storm- 
bound sun, set with yellow streamers, crammed 
into the ocean, and by the time the sidelights 
were lighted and fastened into the screens, the 
wind had a vicious whip to it, and the waves from 
out the evening shadows rushed in upon the 
defenseless ship like a strange army of humpy 
creatures. 

192 



MORE PSYCHOLOGY 193 

It was interesting to one with a nautical eye 
to watch the maneuvers of the Captain and the 
Irishman. 

"Reef her down!" roared the Captain, now 
entirely renouncing his superstitious fears for 
real action, as a real sailor will do every time. 

"The curse of God on the day I iver rounded 
the Horn," shouted the Irishman. "Here we are, 
mind yez, in a hurricane, and in an auld ship that 
opens up her sames to let the ocean in. It's a 
good mind I have not to do a hand's turn, jist 
let her sink and drownd yez like rats!" 

"You'll drown no rats on her this trip !" I 
shouted to him, for the pure mischief of it. 

His raging reply was drowned out by a little 
stubby Swede who had also heard, and now 
breasted the wind and walked up to me. 

"Did you say there ban no rats in her?" 

"Yes," said I. "They left her this trip at 
Garden City." 

"Oh, by Yiminy Mike," he shouted to the 
Irishman, "the rats ban gone!" 

It was pitch dark now, and the spray from the 
waves threw shadows of light across the deck- 
load, but not enough to show the expression of 



194 OCEAN ECHOES 

Mike's face when the Swede told him that the 
rats had left the ship. There is something about 
an Irishman in a crisis that is different from 
most people. When hope is gone he doesn't 
want to be told about it. He may feel more the 
danger of dying, due perhaps to training and 
superstition, but to say to him, "This is the end, 
let us make our peace with God," would surely 
make him fight you before the end did come. 

When the Swede told Mike that the rats had 
gone, and the other sailors heard the news, there 
was a human nucleus of silence in the rising 
storm, while each took stock of himself after his 
fashion. The situation was really serious 
enough without the added dread caused by the 
deserting rats. 

No one felt the solemnity of it all more than 
Mike. But when the Swede spoke up: "Well, 
by Yiminy, this is the last of us," Mike flew at 
him. 

"Ah to Hell wit yez, shure it's wailin' like a 
Banshee ye are. What does an auld rat amount 
to annyway? Shure they left the auld hooker 
because they were all shtarved to death, that's 
what they did, and who would blame thim? 



MORE PSYCHOLOGY 195 

Let's reef her down, me byes, she's a foine little 
ship, so she is." 

We reefed her down, and hove her to, and all 
the time Mike sang songs of love and songs of 
hate, but never a song of fear. 

The Captain, feeling temporary relief from 
anxiety, returned to his superstition and asked 
Mike to stop singing, thinking that his high notes 
caused the apexes of wind, which certainly did 
accompany them. 

"It's bad enough as it is," whined the squirm- 
ing Captain, "without tantalizing the elements." 

The wind, like the night, came stronger. The 
ship rolled, groaned, and flung herself carelessly 
at the humpy ocean. When an extra daring sea 
would leap to the high deckload and find its level 
on the heads of the pumpers, the Swede would 
cry out, "Another like that ban the last of us," 
and Mike would roar : 

"Keep yer clapper closed. Shure it'll be the 
likes of you that'll be drivin' me from the say, 
and not the storms at all, at all." 

The night was gloomy, and to look at the Cap- 
tain made it gloomier still. He kept running 
from the barometer to the pump exclaiming: 



196 OCEAN ECHOES 

"Didn't I know that it would come to this?" 
When he'd look at the compass, the binnacle light 
shining in his face would show wrinkles of pain 
there, made by the agonies of the ship. Morning 
came, and the topaz sky cast an angry glare on 
the agitated sea. The wind whipped and bit at 
the ship, and in her leakiness she would shiver 
at the violence of the waves. The part of her 
hull that wasn't submerged would rise up to their 
taunts like a black-finned mammoth from the 
deep, Avrithing in torture. 

Towards noon the weather grew better, we 
gave her more sail, and headed her away on her 
course. For nineteen days we pumped to keep 
her afloat until we made Kedondo. Sleep we 
hardly had at all, and our aching muscles hard- 
ened, and grew to monstrous size. 

The port had neither harbor nor tug-boats, 
and the open sea washed in against the wharves, 
running far out from the shore. When we came 
to anchor, and the ship brought strain on the 
cable, it snapped, and the long ground swells 
made a total wreck of her on the sandy beach. 
That was the end of her, whether the rats had 
anything to do with it or not. 



MORE PSYCHOLOGY 197 

It was a great relief to have my feet finally 
touch the sand. I was happy too. I had a red- 
headed sweetheart in that town, and I set about 
finding her. She was there all right, but there 
was no love in her eyes for a ship-wrecked sailor. 
Shortly after that she was married to a young 
customs house inspector, and I scratched another 
red-haired lady from my memory. 

We were paid off at Redondo, and with money 
in our pockets we headed for Murphy's saloon 
and drank one another's health. The Captain 
and I left Mike and the Swede with their arms 
around each other singing, "Rolling Home 
Across the Sea," as we started by rail for San 
Francisco. 

The owners were glad to see us, and happy 
that we didn't bring their old rotten ship into 
port again. If we had had to go down in her it 
would have been regrettable, though after all 
our risk; but they were just as well pleased that 
we should live to pump another day. But we 
had a different greeting from the insurance com- 
pany. One would have thought that we were 
murderers from the gruelling they gave us. We 
stuck to the truth, try as they might to shake 



198 OCEAN ECHOES 

us, and in the end the owners received a large 
sum of money for their worthless, unseaworthy 
ship. 

The Captain and I, like a river with two chan- 
nels, parted, never to meet on this earth again. 
He told me that he was tired of the sea, and 
intended to put his savings into a little place 
ashore. We shook hands; and, as we parted, I 
am sure that we were both thinking of rats, 
rotten ships, and storms. 



CHAPTER XXIV 

Some Facts About Women, Red Haired and 

Otherwise, With a Word About Wives, 

and a Peaceful Conclusion in the 

Pick and the Gold-pan 

a S mate my next ship was bound for the 

/% Fijis in the South Seas, and the Cap- 

-X. JL tain died on the voyage, and I took the 

ship to port and home again. I have described 

this voyage in my book "The Flying Bo'sun." 

The critics, who plow not the oceans, received 
it very kindly, as I hope they will receive this 
narrative. So I yarn along, and think of past 
things, and write them down, partly as a sailor 
who knew all that was hard and rough, and 
partly as a man recently come to writing who is 
intoxicated with the new-found use of words to 
evoke old scenes. 

Now "The Flying Bo'sun," though being in- 
tended to present me fairly to the world, did not 

199 



200 OCEAN ECHOES 

mention that I had a girl in the Fijis. Well I 
did. A real sweetheart. She wasn't black — 
they never were — nor yellow; just a sweet and 
wholesome girl, and as fond of me as I of her. 

A sailor not in love is a discontented one, and 
it was seldom in this respect that I was out of 
harmony with the world. I hope that I can go 
on loving till my eyes are closed, and my toes 
are tied together, like my grandmother's were 
when she died, when I was a little boy. They 
tied her toes together, but the knees would not 
stay down. Finally, to keep them from bending 
up and scaring everyone, a large stone was put 
upon them. Somehow the knees jumped up any- 
way, the stone rolled off, and everyone thought 
that she must have seen some sight in Heaven 
to make her jump so. 

I'm sure I'll be all the better for the beauties 
I see in Heaven, as I have been for those I've 
seen on earth, and so is every other man, regard- 
less of the years that kink ard wrinkle and round 
him into narrowness. 

Women that I've met I've often compared with 
ships that I have sailed on. Some are better in 
a storm than others. Then there are the cranky 



FACTS ABOUT WOMEN 201 

ones who throw up their head and balk the tide, 
and spill you into an ocean of trouble. 

Of course, there are instances where the master 
is at fault. That is where you carry too much 
sail, and you wait too long to reef her down. 
Then there is a separation of something. You are 
either dismantled and left with but a memory 
of your once-beautiful ship, or you both sink 
together. 

There is another kind of ship that will with- 
stand gales in an open sea, but once you point 
her landward you have to be careful of sub- 
merged reefs, for she's sure to find them. 

There are a few ships, not too few, that sailors 
love, whose compass course will steer them 
through iceberg-gaps and narrow straits, and on 
to Isles of Splendor. 

My South Sea sweetheart lived in Suva, the 
capital of the Fijis. Our fondness for each other 
ripened into more than friendship. Although 
my stay there was short, my impressions of her 
still linger, like memories of hawthorn blossoms 
when the dew lifts and fuses away in the morn- 
ing sun. It was two years after that that I 
sailed there again, and meantime my letters to 



202 OCEAN ECHOES 

her were as irregular as the winds of ocean. 
When I arrived I learned that she was married 
and living in Australia. 

The Fijis held little to interest me after that. 
I was disheartened and discouraged with every- 
thing. But the Sea, my first love, took me back, 
and in her lanes I found the tonic to cure aches 
and longings, and make me a lover again, almost 
before the isles of shadowed pines had faded into 
a blur of azure light. 

Six months had passed, and I was in a home 
port again. I became engaged to a girl in the 
State of Washington. I was twenty-seven years 
old then, and a Captain sailing on coastwise 
ships. We were married, and I gave up the sea 
for a while. This marriage proved to be the 
ship that balks the tide. For six years we held 
true to our course, then a squall from the desert, 
for we were living there, arose from the cactus 
and sage-brush and blew us apart, but left its 
memories of the wreck. 

Five years later I met and married another. 
She lived in the jungles of Idaho. She was slick 
and trim, and had memory's likeness to my South 
Sea girl. Like the ship that handles well in the 



FACTS ABOUT WOMEN 203 

open sea, she made for the land without compass 
and struck a reef. That was a total wreck of 
memories, and a short voyage — two months in 
all. We parted, I going to the sea — wailing over 
me now, in despair of me — and she to a man who 
had many sheep and many fleeces to his credit. 

I was married again, but that's another story 
and needs atmosphere, so I'll paddle past it and 
survey the shores below ; and some quiet evening 
when the muskrat's splash spreads a splatter of 
spray, I'll buck the stream and paddle back, and 
spin the yarn. 

When I first left the sea I went to mining in 
Goldfield, Nevada. That was in 1903. There 
was a boom on then, and a few of the mines held 
high-grade ore. There were about ten thousand 
people in the camp. Being fresh from the sea, 
and knowing nothing about mines or mining, I 
thought that the people I met there were about 
as crazy as anything I had ever seen. 

The camp was wide open. There was nothing 
barred — everything went. Justifiable homicide 
was the verdict for those who were quick on the 
trigger, and it behooved the tenderfoot to get 
acclimated with the utmost speed to those who 



204 OCEAN ECHOES 

sniffed the alkali. There was no room for friend- 
liness in that great selfish clamor. Everyone 
was for himself. 

The mountains that had hitherto guarded their 
secrets from the lust of men were now gouged 
and cut, and in some places showed their treas- 
ure. Burros and pack mules climbed the steep 
trails, their old and new masters pushing, and 
cursing, and clubbing them along. Like hungry 
locusts, these men of no particular nationality, 
and little love of home, swept the hills as If to 
raven on the bushes and the dust. 

I, like the drift from a wreck, was swept away 
by a comber of greed, to join the rest in the con- 
quest of canyon and peak. I bought burros, 
bacon, beans, and flour, picks and shovels and 
drilling-steel. I rambled the hills and gophered 
holes. I staked claims and located town and 
water sites. I thought of myself as big in a 
financial way. I talked in millions, as did every- 
one else there. 

But that's the joke the desert plays on the vic- 
tim who wrestles with her mysteries. I had 
thought that I owned gold and silver mines, cop- 
per, cinnabar, and turquoise. They had surface 



FACTS ABOUT WOMEN 205 

symptoms to lead one on to dig, and dig, and toil 
and sweat, and spend the last cent to reach the 
utmost peak of stained illusion. So I mined in 
Nevada till the last dollar was gone, and I was 
left with a broken home and lawsuits, typhoid 
and rheumatism. 

There is another side to the mountain ranges 
and desert sands, but the lust for gold must dis- 
appear before one sees the beauty of nature. 
The men who spend their lives there are as inter- 
esting as the. little brown brook that bubbles 
down the mountain-side. 

"Desert rats" they are called; and they and 
their old shaggy burros who nibble the green 
tops of the sage-brush are as much a part of the 
landscape as the silent cactus-sentinel of the 
desert which is supposed to shelter the souls of 
pioneers dead and gone; the "Joshua." 



CHAPTER XXV 

The Story of the Return of Lida and of 
Two Strange Men 

LIDA had been an old silver camp, and in 
the early sixties it was a booming town. 
This much was told me by an old squaw 
man who lived there. He was one of those early 
miners who stayed on in a town after the mines 
played out, in the hope that some day it would 
awake once more to the click of a pistol and the 
bray of the burro. 

He was an Austrian by birth, and his name 
ended in "vitch." I could never pronounce it. 
A squaw lived with him who showed the years 
more than he. The desert wrinkles, like kinks 
in a juniper, were furrowed in her face. He 
treated her much as one would an outlaw cayuse, 
kicking and beating her when he felt like it ; and 
in course of time when prosperity made him inde- 
pendent of the little comfort she gave him, it was 
said that he doped a bottle of whiskey for her. 

206 



TWO STRANGE MEN 207 

Certain it was that she died suddenly, with all 
the symptoms of poisoning, and that he buried 
her alongside the pump in the back yard with as 
little consideration as one would show a mongrel 
dog. There was no law there to punish him, 
and the squaw was covered up and soon forgot- 
ten. He had, in spite of this, a kind of pathetic 
way with him, and when he told a story to the 
miners about his poor old mother in Austria they 
fell for it, and bought drinks from him. 

But I am straying ahead of my story. When 
I first saw him, the squaw was alive, and she and 
he lived in a 'dobe house at the head of what once 
had been the principal street of Lida. You could 
not tell that then. The sage-brush grew over it, 
covering the wagon ruts, and up on the hill 
beyond was the graveyard, shrouded in under- 
brush, dead as dead could be. Few, if any, of 
the miners buried there had died natural deaths, 
as the scrawly hand-written grave boards bore 
witness. 

But no decay could obliterate memories of 
former greatness, and it was decreed that Lida 
should come to life again, after forty years. A 
new generation of miners came and took on 



208 OCEAN ECHOES 

where the old generation had left off. The town 
site was grubbed, the brush burned up, and lots 
were sold to newcomers. Tents went up, the 
squaw man started a saloon, chips rattled and 
pistols clicked, and Lida was herself again. 

The Austrian's dream had come true. He 
owned the town site, and money came in fast. 
His only trouble was with an occasional "lot- 
Ijumper," someone who was rash enough to settle 
in dispute of his quit-claim title to the town lots. 
But this trouble was a small item, being quickly 
settled with a gun. He was a big man now, and 
dictated town policies of the tent town, and 
signed as many checks as he cashed. 

One day, when the old town had been new 
about six months, a stranger drove up in an auto- 
mobile. There was nothing unusual in this, but 
there was something unusual in the man. Big 
and broad and strong he looked, and his large 
round face showed that he had been carefully 
fed. The tan of the desert was missing. His 
eyes were black and penetrating, and he carried 
an atmosphere of power over men, which was 
confirmed by the tight lips which concealed a 
mouth well filled with fine teeth, and covered by 



TWO STRANGE MEN 209 

a jet black mustache. He must have been past 
middle age, for his hair was graying at the tem- 
ples, and he had quite a swagger as he pulled 
off his linen duster. 

"Yes," said he, without preliminary, as his 
compelling eye roved over a chance group of 
miners while he marched about limbering his 
legs, "Yes, boys, I am going to do things here that 
will astonish the natives. I'm going to put Lida 
on the map." 

"Vot's dot?" asked the Austrian, sidling up to 
him with elbows squared, "Vot's dot?" 

The stranger saw fit to dispose of him with a 
stare which had been useful on other similar 
occasions, and the Austrian growled and went 
away. 

That night there was a meeting in Dutch 
John's saloon. The stranger took charge. He 
bought the miners drinks, and told them of Lida's 
wonderful possibilities. At first, when their 
vision had been unclouded, they had been inclined 
to think him an unscrupulous promoter and a 
crook. Now they fell for his golden words. 

"Right at your door, gentlemen," he cried, in 
concluding a flowery and powerful speech, 



210 OCEAN ECHOES 

"under your eyes, beneath these grand old peaks, 
is one of the richest gold camps in the world. 
It is no more than right that we should dedicate 
a city of granite blocks to those noble spires 
that have been true to their trust these million 
years, even if, as my engineers tell me, it will be 
necessary to abandon the present town site for 
one on the slope of the hill. Near here, Men of 
the Hills, are the graves of silent pioneers. If 
each of those mouldering forms could rise up 
and speak to you, I am sure they would say, 
"Move, and buy, and be not afraid, for the future 
is golden." 

Then he bought drinks, and shook each miner 
by the hand. As he searched the faces, his black 
eyes spoke : "I'm here to trim you, and trim you 
right!" 

It was plain that the stranger had them going, 
and the squaw man told them so. He reduced 
the price of his lots — a quarter, a half — and he 
had the main street plowed and rolled. While 
they commented on how much better it looked, 
he, too, gave the miners free drinks. His corral 
gate was opened, and the town burros hee-hawed 
in, and nibbled on the baled hay. The burro 



TWO STRANGE MEN 211 

men were pleased, and slapped the squaw man 
on the back, assuring him of their loyalty to the 
old town. 

At last he gave way to his emotion. With his 
old face warped in coyote grins he cried : "Veil, 
Byes, I haf von ting to do before I vos dead." 

The burro men looked at each other. The 
squaw man waved them away as they tried to 
pat him on the back. He was shaking as if with 
a chill. The flimsy pine bar shook with him, 
and the glasses rattled. Again he spoke : "I do 
it, and I do it queek!" 

He got no further, for a shadow broke the 
desert sunlight on the floor, and the stranger 
stood in the doorway. 

"Give us a drink, Dutchy," he said quietly, as 
if the very atmosphere were not charged with 
hate of him, and as quietly moved up to the bar. 

The squaw man reached under the bar with 
his old desert-bleached hand, and brought up a 
revolver. The burro men scattered like scud 
before a gale, but the stranger stood there, lean- 
ing against the bar, looking quietly into the ter- 
rible face of Dutchy. 

The squaw man licked his dry lips and spoke : 



212 OCEAN ECHOES 

"I vos going to kill you, you damned crook. 
You steal mine town up mit de hill." 

The stranger threw his eyes full on Dutchy. 
Then he walked along the bar without a word, 
and wrenched the revolver from him; easily, 
deliberately, it seemed. Then he slapped him on 
the jaw. 

"Dutchy," he said, and the miners outside the 
door began to come back at the words ; "you may 
poison squaws, and shoot men in the back, but 
when it comes to an even break you are a coward. 
Nov/ hurry and get drinks for the boys. Come 
on," he called, "the fight is over, and Dutchy 
feels better now." 

We drank, and the stranger pulled out a great 
roll of bills, stripping them down until he came 
to a twenty, on which Dutchy's eyes fastened 
with the look of a greedy hound. The stranger 
bade him keep the change. 

The stranger's reputation was made now. 
He had proved his steel to the natives of Lida. 
He was one of those great men of early times 
whose genius was real, no matter how mis- 
directed. He was an old hand at the game of 
fleecing, and he knew that before you commence 



TWO STRANGE MEN 213 

to shear the sheep you must first get them cor- 
ralled. 

He slung his money about like a drunken 
sailor, and everyone, even the Piute Indians, 
sang his praises. We believed that there was 
fabulous wealth in the hills, and that his purpose 
was to build comfortable homes for the men of 
the desert; as he said, "to help put windows into 
the mountains," that we might see the fortunes 
Svhich were to be ours for the asking. 

When a man of the stranger's type visits a 
desert mining town it is not from choice, but to 
create a gap in the trail of his reputation. Un- 
fortunately he, who could have played high fin- 
ance equally well on the square, had chosen the 
line of least resistance in hidden places. 

He had a record, which included a peniten- 
tiary term. It was said that there he had sold 
the warden fifteen thousand dollars worth of 
wildcat stock, and yet got pardoned. He had 
been a lawyer, and was gifted with a mind that 
could squeeze him out of any tight place. His 
scheme for the new town site in Lida was backed 
by a Goldfield bank that had no scruples about 
spending depositors' money. So the new town 



214 OCEAN ECHOES 

site was cleared of sage-brush and Joshua, streets 
were laid out, and blocks plotted. 

In vain the squaw man offered us inducements 
to stay. His cowardice and greed had killed him 
in face of the stranger's liberality and promises, 
and like the sheep again, we rolled up our tents 
and moved them up the hill to the new town. 

By this time the stranger had six automobiles, 
all new, running from Goldfield and bringing in 
newcomers with money to buy lots. A one-plank 
sidewalk was laid which was only a preliminary 
to the granite buildings, but it inspired confi- 
dence, for lumber was one hundred and fifty dol- 
lars a thousand feet at the railroad sixty miles 
away. It cost three cents a pound to haul it to 
Lida by mule-team. 

The stranger cared nothing for these minor 
matters of expense. The bank in Goldfield had 
plenty of money. The sap-headed depositors 
were too busy in the mountains hunting gold to 
bother their heads about banks or plank side- 
walks. 



CHAPTER XXVI 

Concerning the Last of the New and the 

Old-New Town of Lida; of Dutchy and 

the Woman and the Stranger, and 

Leaving Things Almost as They 

Were in the Sixties. A 

Shake-down 

DUTCHY was alone now. No induce- 
ment he could make would hold any- 
one, and he was left pretty much to 
the company of stray burros, and the dead squaw 
under the pump. His hair and beard grew long 
and weedy. The nails on his fingers resembled 
the talons of an eagle, his overalls and shirt-front 
were dirty and spattered with flour dough. He 
refused to visit the new town, although the 
stranger, knowing that he had money, used every 
wile to get him there, and stayed on in the old 
Lida, praying for a vengeance that he had him- 
self failed to get. 

215 



216 OCEAN ECHOES 

The mountains chimed the echoes of pounding 
steel. The exploding giant powder rang through 
the canyons like the roar of an angry bull. Hill- 
sides were torn open by the hungry, gaunt, and 
ravenous miners. Women were there, too, with 
boots and picks on their shoulders, and as savage 
as the male brutes in their scrambling greed. 

The old graveyard of the sixties was grubbed 
of its underbrush, and a fence stuck around it. 
Many fresh graves were made open to be filled 
by men who were clumsy with a gun. One day 
a woman of the underworld was to be buried 
there. She might have gone on living, it was 
said, had she had a good doctor. There was a 
doctor there, but he had waited until he was 
forty-five years old to graduate by a correspond- 
ence course. Meantime he ran a hoist. 

When a man died, very little attention was 
paid to him. He was boxed up as a matter of 
course, dumped into the grave, and as quickly 
forgotten. But with this woman it was different. 

There was a feeling of sentiment in the air. 
Those rough men of the hills threw down their 
picks and put their giant powder away, and 
wandered solemnly into town. She who now 



THE WOMAN AND THE STRANGER 217 

lay stretched in death on a cot in the back end 
of a saloon and who had received little in life 
but whiskey, grunts and kicks from men — she 
was going to have a funeral. However little her 
joy may have been in her frock-apron days, her 
spirit must rejoice now at the faces sorrowing 
at her departure from the clay. 

There was a Scotchman in the hills who in 
days gone by had been a Presbyterian minister. 
He was sent for to bury the prostitute. 

There was another sorrow on the wing to Lida, 
far greater to the minds of most men than the 
death of her who had bartered her body that 
brutes might lust to scorn her. 

The bank in Goldfield, to which the stranger 
had given his brains that the new town of Lida 
might grow, had gotten about all of the people's 
money that it needed. The president and the 
cashier had absconded, stealing everything but 
a five-dollar gold piece and a five-cent piece that 
rolled under the safe. That was all that was 
left of a hundred thousand dollars of deposits. 
The news was to strike Lida when the miners 
were in from the hills, drawn by the funeral to 
meet in a greater grief. 



218 OCEAN ECHOES 

They were all small depositors, and their hun- 
dred dollars or so represented years of depriva- 
tion in the desert, misery, thirst, and hunger. 
Lida would be swept off the map as quickly as 
she had been put on it. Her granite buildings 
that were to welcome the morning rays of the 
desert sun, must now mirage the specter of a 
thief's glory — the granite ghost of yesterday. 

That day the stranger did not face the music. 
By the time the stage-coach brought the news of 
disaster, he had sought trails still more hidden 
from the light of day. The driver of the stage- 
coach was the owner of lots in Lida, and a depos- 
itor in the bank in Goldfield. He whipped his 
horses most of the thirty miles to get the news 
to Lida, and the news settled on the town like 
the March wind that brings hail. 

Men began to look queer and snuff the air, as 
before a battle. They were not to be trifled with 
that day. A double duty confronted them. 
They had not forgotten their reverence for the 
open grave, but their eyes shifted quickly away 
to where the sage and sky met — where might be 
some puff of dust to betray a fugitive bank 
robber. 



THE WOMAN AND THE STRANGER 219 

The ex-preacher arrived late in the afternoon. 
He was tired, and so was the cayuse he was 
riding. He was a heavy man, fat from eating 
sour-belly and beans. His khaki trousers had 
been whipped clean by the brush he had squeezed 
through. His cheeks were flabby and hairy, his 
knuckles were skinned, and the loose soles on his 
worn-out boots flopped when he walked. 

The men of Lida had been waiting for him 
since the stage-coach came in. That was two 
long hours ago — years of suspense it seemed to 
them. A man of the desert, whose casual eye is 
his companion in danger, might have noticed the 
queer actions of the miners that peaceful May 
evening. 

Horses, saddled and bridled, pranced nerv- 
ously and snapped at the halters that bound 
them to tent pegs. Then there were wild-looking 
bronchos hitched to buckboards, that would rear 
back in their harness and plunge forward, hurry - 
ingly anxious to get away to the dust of the 
desert. 

A man who plows his own field and never 
roams beyond his own boundary line would have 
been afraid had he looked into the faces of the 



220 OCEAN ECHOES 

miners, so grim they were, so resolute in restraint, 
so death-respecting, and death-dealing. All 
armed as they were, with notched rifles and re- 
volvers, some with lighthearted mother-of-pearl 
adornment to make their work more palatable, 
still the expression on their faces outdid in 
threat the fact of their weapons. 

The preacher dismounted at the saloon where 
the body of the dead woman lay. "Give me 
some beer," he demanded, and they gave him 
beer. "Now we'll take up the corpse," he an- 
nounced, "and go to the graveyard and bury it." 

It was a quarter of a mile up the hill to the 
grave. The woman was tenderly carried there 
on the shoulders of men who were quick on their 
feet and quick with their eye. She might have 
been a precious gem, such delicate care she had 
in being lowered into the open hole. 

Hats were taken off. The preacher stood on 
the mound of loose dirt that was soon to cover 
her up. There was the serenity of peace in the 
poise of the miners. The hill and the canyon 
below were in shadow, and beyond the peaks of 
the Panamint were ablaze in amber coloring. 
What a strange picture it made! Half a thou- 



THE WOMAN AND THE STRANGER 221 

sand men with heads bared and bowed over the 
grave of a whore. Half a thousand ruined men, 
waiting for revenge! 

The preacher read a burial service, and spoke 
a simple word in defense of the faults that had 
been the ruin of her. Then he called on them 
to sing "Nearer my God to Thee," leading the 
hymn in a rich baritone. One by one those soul- 
hardened men joined in, and as they sang their 
faces relaxed and the anguish-wizened lines dis- 
appeared. 

When they had finished, there was a great 
clearing of throats. The preacher, looking down 
solemnly on the grave, said : "Let us all offer a 
silent prayer, that her soul may take wing from 
these canyons and ranges, and on to the East 
where the dark clouds grow less, on to the King- 
Star whose brilliant aurora will cleanse and 
cure it from Earth's wandering wounds." 

The heads were bent again, and as the prayer 
went out, an uncanny silence crept over the 
grave, a silence that the sea makes, sometimes to 
be broken by the leap of a fish or the spout of a 
whale. 

This silence was broken by a laugh — a laugh 



222 OCEAN ECHOES 

that had the ring of hate, lust, selfish greed, and 
madness — and a muddled articulation of oaths, 
and groans and epithets. Somewhere in the 
crowd a rifle spoke, and less than a quarter of a 
mile away the squaw man dropped into the brush 
to laugh no more. The ex-preacher raised his 
head and shouted, "Amen!" 

They filled in the grave and tamped the loose 
soil around, that the coyotes might not burrow 
in and disturb her. The job was done without 
haste. As night shadows were gathering from 
the hills the miners walked away, not in the 
solemn way they had come, but with a quick, 
released step which led them to their saddle- 
horses and buckboards. 

Like a charge of cavalry they were off; just 
dashed into the darkness. The bank robbers 
were ahead with a twelve-hour start. Two days 
later the president and the cashier were caught. 

They weren't killed, sad to say, but brought 
back and made to stand trial. Nevada had no 
banking laws then. All that was required was 
a sign on the door: "Bank open from ten till 
three." Depositors had no protection. Paid for 
with the stolen money, the trial was put off from 



THE WOMAN AND THE STRANGER 223 

time to time, and eventually thrown out of court. 

The stranger had disappeared before the crash 
came, but soon afterwards he was heard from 
again. A desert editor, the newspaper said, had 
blown off his head with a sawed-off shotgun in 
a quarrel. 

Lida was no more. Jackrabbits ran unhin- 
dered where the town had stood. The sage- 
brush began to grow over old and new graves 
alike. The hills lay pock-marked, pitted. The 
microbe, man, had gone somewhere to bore an- 
other hole. Time, with its charter of shifting 
sands, would fill the pits, and the afterglow of 
the early sixties would haze the hills in ether 
waves, and cover the spots with sage and shist. 

The money-and-faith-robbed miners, I among 
them, scattered to new work. It was in Gold- 
field, shortly afterwards, that typhoid fever 
overtook me. 

My doctor, who loved to needle himself with 
morphine, told me that I had had a narrow 
escape, and I believed him ; judging from the 
trouble it was to learn to walk again. The Gold- 
field undertakers, too, were making inquiries 
about me, as to where I lived, and whether I had 



224 OCEAN ECHOES 

much money. Ah, they throve there in those 
days! Five hundred dollars for a pine box. If 
the bereaved lived outside the state, and wanted 
the body, the lead easing around the coffin cost 
the price of a desert convoy. 

By this time my wife had left me, and what 
money I had saved from the wreck in Lida went 
to pay doctor, druggist, and hospital. I had 
rheumatism, and limped around on a couple of 
canes. I had a great longing for the sea, and 
wanted to raise enough money to go back. 

One of Tiffany's engineers examined a tur- 
quoise claim that I held, and approved it. Tif- 
fany offered to buy on a bond sale, with a cash 
payment down of five thousand dollars. I was 
happy again, but not for long. Another crook 
crossed my trail, with falsified affidavits of pre- 
vious ownership. That meant endless litigation. 
Tiffany wasn't buying a lawsuit, and my deal fell 
through. 

I hobbled away to another camp, where I met 
the young man whom I had helped in Vancouver. 
He now assisted me back to strength, and sent 
me away with money in my pocket. I went 
straight to San Francisco, and feasted on Dunge- 



THE WOMAN AND THE STRANGER 225 

ness crabs the night of my arrival. I went to 
bed, and felt the comfort of the clean linen sheets, 
so different from the dirty-dusty sage tuck blan- 
kets of the desert. I went to sleep with that 
sigh that brings relaxation like that of a child 
after a hard cry. 

I was suddenly awakened, it must have been 
about five in the morning. The walls came 
tumbling down upon me, and it seemed that I 
would choke from lime dust, and loose bricks. 

The door leading to the stairs was warped, 
and I could not open it. For a moment a prayer 
for deliverance flashed through my mind; then 
the sailor in me rebelled, and took command. I 
fished a chair out of a pile of bricks, and drove 
it through the door. 

I dressed in the street that morning with thou- 
sands of people of both sexes. 

In the face of the widespread disaster of the 
earthquake, private misfortune dwindled and 
for my own sake I do not regret the experience, 
hard as it was, nor even the total loss of all my 
papers and the treasured, useless, invaluable 
souvenirs of a lifetime in which hitherto there 
had not been overmuch of love and sweetness. 



226 OCEAN ECHOES 

My life, like that of so many others, was 
spared only by a miracle. After doing what I 
could, through the next awful hours, to help in 
the rescue work, I booked passage North by 
steamer. 



CHAPTER XXVII 

Ways and Means. The Noble Art op Sales- 
manship, With Some House-to-House 
Philosophy 

ANIGHT or two later in Tacoma, I was 
sitting in the hotel lobby, wondering 
what to do next. A fat, flabby man, 
whose eyes, however, had a fine quality, squeezed 
himself into the chair alongside of me. We 
talked about the weather, and the people going 
past outside the window, and of the thousands 
who had suffered in the earthquake. Then he 
encouraged me to talk of myself, and I sketched 
my life for him in some detail, not cheerfully, I 
must admit. 

He listened with interest, for he seemed to 
fancy me. When I had done, he asked : "What's 
the loss of a few dollars?" And unbuttoning his 
coat, and exposing a large morocco-bound book; 
"It amounts to nothing. Why, you haven't 
found yourself yet, that's the trouble. I was 

227 



228 OCEAN ECHOES 

forty years old before I found myself, and the 
result is that the last year I made twenty thou- 
sand dollars, and this year promises to double 
that amount." 

He talked on, fairly bristling with energy. 

"It's seldom that I do what I am going to do 
for you," he whispered ; "I am going to take you 
along with me, and show you how to pile up 
dollars." 

"Doing what?" I asked. I'll grant him that 
he had me swamped in dollars, and that I felt as 
nervous as any bank-robber. 

He pulled out the morocco-bound book from 
his pocket. His eyes beamed with enthusiasm, 
and he forgot that we were not alone in the hotel. 
He slapped the book down on the arm of his chair 
and shouted: 

"This is what we get our money from. The 
'Student's Reference,' in three volumes, sold in 
every home in the IT. S. for nineteen dollars and 
seventy-five cents! Children knock you down 
in the street for it. Women weep for the privi- 
lege of buying it from you! Five dollars com- 
mission on each set, and ten sets a day you sell ! 
Four hours work! Three hundred dollars a 



THE ART OF SALESMANSHIP 229 

week ! Friends by the thousands ! Crazy about 
you! Too many! A wonderful business!" 

Giving me no time even to catch my breath, 
he jumped to his feet, as he went telling me to 
meet him the next morning at nine o'clock. 
Then he trotted rapidly off to the elevator, from 
which, as it whisked him out of sight, he called 
a final "Good night !" 

I went to bed, oblivious of rheumatism and 
earthquake, to dream of treasure, and thousands 
of friends. 

Two hours later, the hotel being cleared of the 
mold of the day, and the yawning clerks and the 
busy night-porter willing me off to bed, I went, 
my mind still foggy, as it had been these two 
hours, with books and greenbacks, and the hope 
of getting back again to ease and self-respect. 

I met the book man at nine o'clock the follow- 
ing morning. He had lost none of the charm of 
the night before. We flew to talking ; and I went 
to work under his instructions, selling books. 

For three months I was a successful book 
agent, making money easily. But as if some 
fluency lay in money so easily gained, it went 
as if it had no value, and seemed to lack the 



230 OCEAN ECHOES 

power to accumulate. This appealed to my 
sailor's superstition. By what right, I thought, 
did I assume control of my fellow beings, to the 
extent that they must get something they did 
not want, for which they must deprive themselves 
materially? How could I deny responsibility, 
shrugging it onto them for being so easily domi- 
nated? Was it not a kind of black art that I 
was practising? God forbid, I thought, and gave 
it up. 

As I look back on it now, I still can see it no 
other way, for the rich and the poor were help- 
less in our hands. Our arguments flowed over 
them, covered them, swamped them, sucked them 
under — and they were gone, as if their money 
were ours, and not theirs. 

So I went back to "that old devil, sea" again, 
to clean soiled hands with Stockholm tar. 



CHAPTER XXVIII 

Farewell to an Old Friend of the Early 

Days — And Au Revoir to the First, and 

Only Friend of All the Years. 

Rather a Sad Chapter, Take 

It All In All 

ONE day, shortly after I left the book 
business, I was in a small town on the 
Puget Sound, looking for a ship. 
Strolling around, I was attracted by a crowd in 
front of a general store. Policemen were run- 
ning and women screaming, and with one thing 
and another there seemed, for a small town, to 
be no end of excitement. 

Always being of a curious nature, I hurried 
with the rest to the store, elbowing my way 
through the crowd as I went, in order not to miss 
the finish, whatever it might be. As I passed the 
outer noisy strata of human beings, and pene- 
trated the last hushed edge before a clearing on 
the sidewalk, I saw a tall and skinny policeman 

231 



232 OCEAN ECHOES 

stretched out there bleeding, while triumphantly 
posed over him, making no effort to get away, 
and drunk as drunk could be, stood none other 
than Liverpool Jack. 

He was bare-headed, his coat was off, and his 
shirt was torn to ribbons. His hairy bare arms 
showed beautiful tattooed ladies, ships, anchors, 
and flags of many nations. For a moment, at 
what one might call this "show down" of emotion, 
I felt the distance I had traveled mentally and 
materially since Liverpool Jack and I had been 
mates. I was no better than I had been, but 
whether it was a feeling of difference caused by 
having had money, or whether some real refine- 
ment had grown out of what I had known at 
home — anyway, I shrank from the sight of him. 
Then my loyalty shamed me, and I became alert, 
as always, to help him out. 

Fortunately, I did not have a chance to speak 
to him then; for three strapping policemen, who 
were armed to handle him and me, grabbed hold 
of him, and putting the "twisters" on his wrist, 
led him off to the lockup. He didn't see me, and 
I didn't want him to until I had time to find the 
best way to get him out. 



A SAD CHAPTER 233 

While the crowd helped the policeman to his 
feet, the man who owned the general store told 
me about the fight. It seems that the "cop" had 
imprudently undertaken to arrest Liverpool 
Jack single-handed when he found him drunk in 
the street. He was promptly thrown through 
the window of the general store, where Jack's 
follow-up work did all possible damage to a loose 
and innocent display of potatoes, apples, cereals, 
and tobacco. 

The store-keeper was mourning his loss, and 
damning the inefficient Limb of the Law. Who 
was to pay him for his goods? he whined. Who, 
indeed? For, speeding aAvay to the jail, I man- 
aged for a two hundred dollars' fine, to get Jack 
released. And before the poor store-keeper had 
time to figure the damage we were out of town, 
and on our way to Tacoma. 

There we had to wait a few days for a ship. 
I was now going to take him to sea with me, as 
I feared to leave him. But one night he got 
away from me, and I never again saw him alive. 
Next day his body was found on the railway 
track, mutilated by a train, and some one who 
had been drinking in the saloon where Jack had 



234 OCEAN ECHOES 

been testified that he had heard him say that 
since there seemed to be no one to fight with he 
guessed he might as well pull a few trains off the 
track. 

Probably this statement was not true, but it 
was certainly characteristic of the man the poor 
dead creature had been, and of the savage set to 
his jaw. Even in death he seemed not to have 
found peace; I must remember him as he looked 
then, and be sorry that, at the end, it had to be 
the terrible scrappiness of him that dominated, 
and not the real tender-heartedness and manli- 
ness that I knew so well lay beneath. Poor, poor, 
lonesome Liverpool Jack ! 

With the last of my book-agent money I had 
him buried, and not in the potter's field. Let us 
hope that the better part of him found its inno- 
cent release, and is going on, sailing oceans, 
splicing ropes, and tattooing other souls of fight- 
ing children of the sea. 

For two years now I rambled the oceans, being 
mate, and sometimes master, of fine ships, almost 
of my choice — for I was seasoned, and knew 
something of men, and was free from that in my 
youth which had been unreliable. 



A SAD CHAPTER 235 

Yet something made me weary of the sea, per- 
haps that very fact that youth was gone, even 
to Liverpool Jack — the connecting-link ; and that 
the sea, however much she may still the thirst for 
change, is no husbander of men's strength against 
the future, and has no care for their material 
provision. 

The slow saving of a seaman's wages was a 
process untried by me ever, and my conception 
of provision for the future was gold. Gold in the 
hills, waiting somewhere for me. Somewhere 
opportunity for rest, and a home. More and 
more my thoughts returned to Ireland : to go back 
there with even a little stake, to see my mother; 
to buy a little piece of land near her and work it ; 
to have my dog, and my horse, and my chickens 
and my pigs — and perhaps some day, when the 
Dead Past should have buried its Dead, some 
day, a son of my own to raise, fearless of me and 
of the world. 

"Simply a sailor's dream," you, reader, who 
now perhaps know enough of me to despair of me, 
will say. Ay, simply a sailor's dream ! Simply 
a sailor's dream ! 

For although I knew well enough that thoughts 



236 OCEAN ECHOES 

of home were ever bound up in my mother, and 
although I knew well enough that had I not been 
stubbornly foolish I could have been back in Ire- 
land this many a year, and prosperous, and a 
delight to her, yet never had it occurred to me 
that she might grow other than I had known her 
years ago — that there might not be plenty of 
time; that she might be nearing the end of the 
span. 

So the news that she was dead found me dig- 
ging, and Gold turned hard and lifeless before 
my eyes, and Love sat there beside me, bleeding. 
Blinded by sorrow I went a-roving, and the 
steep braes knew me. I picked and dug and 
washed, from habit, for good luck meant only 
food to me now. Often there was no food, nor 
even water, for that matter, although when thirst 
gets you, you cannot will to die, however cheaply 
you may hold your life. 

And so six years went by, and the loneliness 
of the mountains healed me; and I was a better 
man, but very solitary. 



CHAPTER XXIX 

The Old Man and the Violet Rock, the 

Guardians and the Story op the 

Old Man's Love 

1WAS mining where the Snake River makes 
a boundary line between Idaho and Oregon. 
From seventy miles away came the report 
of a big gold strike. I lost no time in getting 
there. It turned out to be a fluke, based on the 
finding, by a prospector, of a few outcroppings 
of gold. 

I went away as fast as I had come. This time 
I took a trail that led me about a hundred miles 
away from the railroad, into a country where 
there was no mining, and little of anything else. 
What subconscious impulse took me there I can- 
not say. 

My new trail led me to the Owyhee, a long and 
crooked river. It plows through deep gorges, 
and again spreads out where the canyons are 
wide. On its banks are small patches of fertile 

237 



238 OCEAN ECHOES 

land. It was on one of these patches that I met 
The Old Man of Violet Rock. 

I had been traveling all day long without see- 
ing anything human. I was hungry, and my 
horse was tired. There was a high mountain on 
the western side of the river that lay hooded in 
mourning. A lava cap fitted snugly over it ; the 
evening sun seemed perched on its top. 

To the east of me, and the side on which I was 
traveling, a steep table-land broke off, leaving a 
perpendicular sandstone precipice of a thousand 
feet or more. Here were caves, many of them 
large, and semicircular in shape. 

There issued from them a peculiar kind of 
odor. It may have been that wild animals car- 
ried their plunder there to appease their hunger 
in peace, or perhaps it may have been the decay- 
ing of an ancient race. 

The sun had rolled over behind the lava-cap 
now, and as I rode on a squeaky groaning star- 
tled my horse. I dismounted, and leading him, 
walked ahead. It wasn't over three hundred 
yards to the river. I dreaded even this short 
walk, for being in the month of July, snakes with 
many rattles challenged me as I wended my 



THE OLD MAN'S LOVE 239 

way through the sage-brush, in the direction of 
the groaning. 

It was an old water-wheel, run by the current, 
laboring furiously lifting the water to a flume. 
My horse nickered, and I felt happy. We both 
knew that not far from that water-wheel there 
must be some sort of a home, where we could 
rest and feed. 

Following the water ditch a quarter of a mile 
I came to The Lava Rock. Anyone would have 
stopped to admire it, it looked so unusual, large, 
isolated, lying there on the bank of the river. A 
net-wire fence stood around three sides of it, and 
the fourth side faced the river. It would have 
been hard for anyone to reach it from this side, 
where the drop to the water was a sheer twenty 
feet. 

While my horse nibbled on a bunch of withered 
bunch-grass, I leaned against the fence and 
looked in. There must have been half an acre in 
the enclosure — the rock took up one third of 
that. It stood high, peaked and irregular, with 
a broad base. From its summit one could com- 
mand a far view up and down the river. What 
attracted me most to it was the quantity of beau- 



240 OCEAN ECHOES 

tiful flowers that grew around and over it, start- 
lingly colorful in the dusk, a lovely deep blue. 
Violets in bunches, in sods, in great masses, over 
the rock and down its sides, in fissures somehow 
filled with soil, and glorying in release from 
desert barrenness. 

Grass, too, grew on the rock, neatly trimmed 
grass, forming a little path clean over the top 
of it. It is hard to describe the impression of 
peace and sentiment that this sight created in 
me. 

While I still lingered, trying to trace some 
reason for this blooming memorial to geological 
ages, an old man mounted the rock from the 
other side, and came over the violet and grassy 
path toward me. 

"Good evening, sir," said I, instinctively tak- 
ing off my hat to the bent and venerable figure, 
as he stood gazing intently at me with eyes whose 
piercing quality was as yet untouched by time. 
His white hair was blowing with the wind, his 
shoulders were stooped like the slant of a tree 
that has grown always away from some hard 
prevailing wind. 

"Good evening," he replied, in a voice whose 



THE OLD MAN'S LOVE 241 

tonelessness betokened one who talked but little 
with his fellow-men. He looked at me without 
either surprise or interest, as one whose duty to 
humanity will soon be done. 

"If you want food and rest overnight," he con- 
tinued, pointing to a little-used trail along the 
river bank, "follow the irrigation ditch down a 
hundred yards. Then take the path to the left 
till you come to the barn, feed your horse, and 
come back here for your supper." 

I thanked him, and followed his directions. 
The barn was small and shut in by leafy mul- 
berry trees. I fed the horse, and, being hungry, 
hurried back. The old man was standing inside 
the fence by the rock. He held a pan in his hand, 
and at my approach handed it out to me over the 
fence saying: 

"Help yourself to what you want, then wash 
the pan and leave it here. Here is coffee, too," 
and he handed me a cup of real china, strangely 
out of keeping with the desert feast of beans and 
pork and biscuit in the rough pan. Seeing my 
thought in my face, he said quite simply, "Yes, I 
prefer a cup for coffee," and left me to my own 
conclusions. 



242 OCEAN ECHOES 

He went to the corner of the fence, and looked 
down the river. So great was his dignity that I 
should not have thought of questioning him, but 
I could not but wonder at his choosing this 
apparently solid rock as a place to which to bring 
warm food. He had not carried the pan far. 
He must have a fire and a house somewhere. But 
where? Evidently not inside the rock, and no- 
where else visible. 

As if to put a stop to my thoughts, he turned 
back and began to question me. "Why did you 
come this way?" he asked. 

I told him that I had not had the slightest idea 
where I was going, that I simply wanted to 
ramble. 

"How would you like to work for me a week or 
two?" 

"What doing?" I asked, munching the beans. 

"I have some hay to be cut and stacked, and 
there's work to be done on the water-wheel." 

"All right," said I. "I'll do it. How about 
the pay?" 

"I'll pay you whatever is right," said he, 
glancing around suspiciously at the rock. 

There was no more said about pay, nor did I 



THE OLD MAN'S LOVE 243 

doubt his good faith. I finished eating, and 
washed the pan, handing it back to him across 
the fence. 

"What a wonderful place for a house there in 
the rock," I said, tentatively. 

He turned savagely upon me, his whitish 
bushy beard seeming to stick out in protest at 
my profanation. 

"You sleep in the barn," he cried. "You do 
work for me; you can't come inside this fence. 
Good night!" 

He went around the rock, and whether away 
by the other side, or into the rock itself, I had 
no means of telling. Nor did I find out for 
many days, so secret was he about it all. 

What did he have in the rock, to guard so care- 
fully that he would not even let me in? I asked 
myself, as I found my way to the barn. Could 
it be that in his rambles through the hills he had 
found gold? He seemed sane enough, and yet 
his eyes had that odd and fiery glow which I had 
noticed. 

Commonplace thoughts would not set me at 
ease. I seemed to grasp the wildest imagina- 
tions about him and the rock. I wasn't afraid, 



244 OCEAN ECHOES 

and yet there was a strangeness about the whole 
thing, rock, violets, and man, that made me sleep- 
less where I lay in my blanket in the hay. The 
slightest sound startled me ; the stamp of a horse 
brought me to my feet, the rustling of the mul- 
berry leaves wrought a shiver through me, and 
for that night, and for the nights that followed, 
I was haunted by the strange things about me. 

I must have been in the barn about four hours 
that first night when the noise of a falling tree 
scared the very wits out of me. Surely there 
wasn't enough wind to blow it down. As I lis- 
tened, trying to quiet my heart, there came to my 
ears the sound of the groaning water-wheel, 
laboring away in the current of the river. 

Frightened as I was, I opened the barn door 
and walked out and around the building. Then, 
as if to give myself courage, I shouted : 
"What the devil's going on around here?" 
Instantly there came an answering sound. 
"Ka-plunk ! Ka-plunk ! Ka-plunk !" 
I laughed aloud, went into the barn, slammed 
the door, and crawled into the saddle-blanket, 
but not before I had cursed the beavers of the 
Owyhee River! 



THE OLD MAN'S LOVE 245 

When I went out the next morning the sun 
was up, but the rays had not yet reached the 
canyon. The old man was out on the rock, 
watering his violets. He might have been some 
strange animal up there, sucking nectar from the 
hues of the purple glow. Indeed, he did look like 
an animal, hatless and shoeless as he was. His 
short, gnarly legs, his withered arms suggested 
the limbs of a vine. 

That picture of him there, perched upon the 
rock amidst the tender profusion of blooms, 
lingers with me as vividly as the memory of my 
old music master. As I watched him, he picked 
a bunch of violets and disappeared around the 
rock. Who could the flowers be for? Did he 
have a wife? Again my thoughts ran rampant, 
worse than the night before. Curiosity, making 
the adventure worth while, would eventually find 
the secret of the Violet Rock. 

I had breakfast from over the fence that morn- 
ing, and for ten mornings after. Biscuits, bacon, 
or salt pork and beans, and black coffee were 
mostly the fare. I cut the hay, nine acres in all. 
The old Buckeye mowing machine was as ragged 
and worn as its owner. The sickle had to be filed 



246 OCEAN ECHOES 

many times a day. The horses were as mysteri- 
ous, too, as they could be. They'd work steadily 
for awhile, then refuse to work entirely, fall to 
eating, and lie down all harnessed, in the tall 
alfalfa. I'd just sit there atop of the old mower 
and whistle till they got ready to work again; 
then, without warning, with a simultaneous lunge 
they would be up and off, with me hard put to it 
to hold them. The old man would not allow me 
to carry a whip. The horses were old, he said; 
he had had them many years, and no one must 
be unkind to them. 

So it took me three days to mow the hay, and 
I had ample time for amusement between times. 
There was real enjoyment in killing rattlesnakes. 
I carried a pitchfork for those of them that the 
sickle missed. It seemed that to me wherever 
I turned I saw or heard a rattler. To say that 
they didn't have me afraid would not be telling 
the truth. I was as nervous and shifty as a 
squirrel. 

In the evenings I tried to draw out the old man 
to talk about himself. He always evaded con- 
versation of any kind; seldom he moved away 
from the rock, and never when I was around. 



THE OLD MAN'S LOVE 247 

And at the end of the tenth day I was as far 
from knowing anything about him as I had been 
at the end of the first. 

One afternoon when I had about finished 
stacking the hay a thunderstorm came up the 
river, bringing rain and lightning. I hurried 
for shelter to the barn. As I ran the noise of the 
thunder in the canyon was deafening. I was 
soaked. Before I reached the barn lightning 
struck the lava-capped mountain, and released 
great boulders which came plunging down into 
the river. No snake would have had time to 
strike me before I gained the barn, and my snort- 
ing horse and I found reassurance with each 
other, and agreed that Violet Rock was no happy 
place for us. 

The storm increased. It wasn't past three 
o'clock, yet it felt as if night was setting in. I 
felt danger around me, and the sailor in me drove 
me again to the open. I ran for the rock, feeling 
that the old man might be glad of my company 
as I of his. 

Within a hundred yards of the rock I stopped, 
and stood, forgetting myself at the sight of him. 
Through the gaps of spilling cloud-water I saw 



248 OCEAN ECHOES 

him standing on the rock, bareheaded, his long 
white hair lying like loose rope-ends about his 
head. He was talking. His voice reached me 
in mumbles. He was addressing someone or 
something that was hidden by the ridge of droop- 
ing violets. 

A thought flashed through my mind with the 
quickness of the forked lightning that sizzled 
overhead. It was gold he had there, gold to glit- 
ter in the soft rainwater, aged gold to an aged 
Idolater ! 

As I stood there watching him, with the water 
making pools around my feet, I was seized with 
hot resentment and disgust at his daring, there 
in the open, under the eye of the angry gods of 
the elements, to obtrude the little matter of his 
greed ! 

"Shame," I cried aloud; "shame, shame!" 
And I ran again to the barn to get away from 
him, thankful in my heart that gold had never 
meant that much to me. 

When the sun came out I wrung out my clothes, 
and hung them out to dry; then in clean things 
I went out into the clean world and found ripe 



THE OLD MAN'S LOVE 249 

mulberries to feast upon cleansingly. Then I 
strolled off to the sandstone bluffs and wandered 
in and out of caves where once the aborigines 
had made their homes. 

The sun had set, and the shadowed noise of 
creeping things stirred me barnwards. I didn't 
go after my supper that night, nor did he come 
after me to get his. I rolled into my saddle 
blanket and went to sleep, hoping that my im- 
pressions of him were wrong, and resolved to 
leave there in two or three days more, in any 
case. 

The old man awoke me in the morning. He 
stood over me crying excitedly, "Get up, get up ! 
The dam has broken ; the wheel has stopped. We 
must get to work at it right away." 

The breakwater that forced the current from 
the center of the river to the side of the bank 
where the wheel turned, was broken by a freshet 
from the storm. While I was filling and carry- 
ing sacks of sand to mend the break, the old 
man was busy working at the wheel, nailing loose 
boards and tightening nuts here and there on it. 

I paid little attention to him, nor did I know 



250 OCEAN ECHOES 

that my work on the breakwater was slowly driv- 
ing the current under the wheel, where it might 
start to turn at any time. 

That was just what did happen. The water- 
wheel was started going by the force of the cur- 
rent under it. The old man, who was hanging 
on top of it wrenching at a bolt, fell ten or twelve 
feet down into shallow water. 

The noise of the splash hurried me to him. As 
I pulled him out blood was oozing from the side 
of his head. I thought that he was killed, and I 
was alarmed and sorry, for, though I have never 
stayed away from a fight, I would not be the 
cause of hurting anyone. With him in my arms 
— and he was heavy enough — I struggled to the 
top of the bank. 

Gently I laid him down and felt his pulse. It 
was pitiably weak. His blood wet the grass. I 
tore off my shirt and bound his head. The sun 
was over the mountain-top sending down waves 
of heat. There was no shade this side the Violet 
Rock or barn, and big flies were buzzing around. 

It was a long way to the rock, but then, I 
thought, suppose it was. The chance was that 
he was dying, and after all, why shouldn't he be 



THE OLD MAN'S LOVE 251 

near the thing that he prized most in life, what- 
ever it might be? I placed my arms around his 
hips, and slung his trunk to my shoulder. This 
way I carried him to the fence, found the gate, 
and squeezed him through ; then eased him from 
my shoulder, and laid him down alongside the 
rock. 

He groaned aloud, and made an effort as if 
to rise. Surely, I thought, he must have some 
kind of medicine around here that would help 
him to regain consciousness. Timidly, I don't 
know why, I started to explore the rock. I 
hunted around till I came to the river end of it. 
There I found a door. 

Right in front of it was one of the largest rat- 
tlesnakes I have ever seen. Coiled he was, and 
ready for a fight. In an instant I forgot every- 
thing but that snake. I killed him, and made no 
mistake about it. 

The door was fastened with a padlock, the 
frames set loosely in the lava rock. I jumped 
at it with both feet, being by this time so excited 
that I hardly knew what I was doing. The door 
flew off its frail hinges and daylight stopped 
short, at a curtain of inner gloom. 



252 OCEAN ECHOES 

It was a cave, and dark. A hibernating odor 
seemed to come out of it. Ugh! what a place 
to live! I thought, for now I had no doubt that 
this was the old man's house. I took a step or 
two forward, then hesitated. Suppose there 
were snakes here, too? My flesh crept, and I 
retreated, only to be prompted to effort of some 
kind by a groan from outside. 

My eyes being now used to the darkness, I 
could see a feeble ray of light proceeding from, 
I thought, a hole in the roof; and I went slowly 
and carefully ahead. Gradually things began to 
appear. The old man's bed, a chair, shoes under- 
foot, a box or two. No table as yet, no stove. 
But these I thought would reveal themselves 
when I should reach the shaft of light. 

I kept moving on, but somehow I had a sub- 
conscious warning of evil. The hair on my head 
straightened out; I was as springy on my feet 
as a wildcat, and my heart gave me pile-driving 
blows. Then I reached a sort of inner room 
where the light fell, and my muscles set like the 
click of a bear-trap. 

There, sitting on a chair by a table, was a 
skeleton! Evidently that of a woman, and 



THE OLD MAN'S LOVE 253 

before it, upon the table, a great bunch of violets, 
still starry with morning dew. As my muscles 
gradually relaxed, I tiptoed closer. 

It was plain that years had passed since her 
life went out, Much of the long black hair that 
had been hers remained. Time had not parched 
that ; and in the sunken dried-up eyes, the parch- 
ment cheeks, the slender neck, the puckered, 
pointed mouth, was evidence that she may have 
once been beautiful. 

One side of her face had been artfully turned 
to conceal the bones where the light leathery skin 
had fallen off. But the breast and ribs stood 
out starkly, and on the hands and arms skin still 
clung only in little patches. Around the waist 
was tucked a khaki shirt, and the legs and feet 
were, from where I stood, invisible. 

I was overcome by a sort of spiritual reverence. 
The violets upon the table oozed the essence of 
purity, and I knew that I was standing within a 
shrine. My mind took a jump back past time. 

It was easy to picture her, as she used to be. 
Young and beautiful, and full of life, dwelling 
with her lover in the sandstone caves above the 
river, grinding the nuts he brought her for food, 



254 OCEAN ECHOES 

and decking out her hair for him in desert flowers. 

Then something happened that killed the 
pleasure of the thought. The present came back 
upon me fully, and I was sorry for having in- 
truded on the old man's love, and felt that I 
must hasten more than ever, to help him. 

There was a sound behind me, somewhat louder 
than a baby makes when it breathes the sting of 
life into its delicate body. It was a cry that 
would have meant nothing to an unknowing 
listener, but for the one that uttered it it voiced 
life, death, passion, and despair. 

There, through the darkness came the old man, 
staggering towards me. He spoke: "You 
thought I was dead, did you?" And now his 
voice seemed to fill the cave. "You have killed 
the snake that guarded me for years. Now you 
have found Her. You must go away and leave 
me. I ask of you not to tell. There is money 
under my pillow. Take what you think you have 
earned. But, go! go. Leave me, for I must be 
alone." 

He knelt down by the skeleton as he spoke, 
and great tears ran down over the crusted blood 
upon his hand, unhindered. Without a word I 



THE OLD MAN'S LOVE 255 

turned and walked out of the cave. Money I 
did not want from that old man. My misty 
eyes welcomed the sunshine. 

I made for the barn, saddled my horse, and in 
deep inner quiet rode up the river, past the 
violets and the lone rock, past the old water- 
wheel that was groaning again with its laden 
buckets. Somehow this seemed to me a good 
omen. I felt that the old man would be all right 
again. But to this day I regret the killing of 
his snake, for a pet it really was, as I learned that 
afternoon. Feeling the lack of food, for I had 
not eaten since the noon before, I drew up at a 
little farm about twelve miles from the rock. 

A Spaniard who lived there and ran a few 
sheep, told me about the snake — how the old man 
pulled out his fangs and made almost a com- 
panion of him, and how, when he rang a bell, the 
snake would come to him. Then, for the first 
time, I learned the old man's name : John Dakin, 
the Spaniard called him, and I realized that this 
was perhaps the first time that it never had 
occurred to me to try to find out someone's name. 
I had been content to think of him not otherwise 
than as the Old Man. The Spaniard said that he 



256 OCEAN ECHOES 

had been educated, rich, and an archaeologist, 
and of his own accord had settled in these parts, 
and become a kind of hermit, of whom no one 
knew much, except that he was hard to speak to. 
Of the skeleton the Spaniard did not know, nor 
did I enlighten him. 



CHAPTER XXX 

Treats of Fair Play, in Which I Lose One 

Horse ; and of Justice, in Which I Lose 

Another; and of Pity, and My 

Acquisition of a Third 

TWO days later I rode into Jordan Valley, 
Oregon, a cattle and sheep country. I 
came upon a little town in the heart of 
the valley, and remained there one day. It was 
a bad day for me, as I had to leave it on foot, 
having gambled my horse away. 

An old prospector met up with me who had a 
horse as good as mine. Then it happened that 
a farmer drove into town with an old buckboard 
to sell. It was cheap; twelve dollars he asked 
for it. It was of no use to me, nor was it to the 
prospector, each of us having but one horse ; and 
yet we both wished that we had it, for it was 
built for two horses, and roomv, and a stout 
hazel-wood neckyoke stuck out of the froDt of it. 

257 



258 OCEAN ECHOES 

"Well," said the prospector, as we felt of the 
spokes and examined the tires, "we both can't 
have it, but I have a scheme for one of us get- 
ting it." 

"What's that?" I asked. 

"Come over to the hall," he said ; "there's dice 
there, honest dice." 

"One flop out of the box," he continued. "Aces 
high. The high dice take both horses." 

For a moment my mind wandered back to San 
Francisco, to my dice game of tops and bottoms, 
the last game I had played. I had learned a lot 
since then, but the thought of the comfortable 
buckboard, and the obvious honesty of the old 
prospector made me take another chance. 

"Come on," said I. "It shall be as you say." 

"You understand," he said, "the high dice takes 
both horses." 

"How about the saddles?" 

"Everything goes with the horse, and one flop 
out of the box settles it." 

He shook first and rolled two fives. 

I shook the dice, I blew on them ; I swung them 
over my head three times. When they rolled 
onto the mahogany bar two threes were all I 



FAIR PLAY 259 

had. I felt a bit sad when I saw the prospector 
drive away with the two horses hitched to the 
buckboard. 

Then commenced a series of makeshifts for 
me. I footed it through the hills and desert, 
getting work where I could to earn enough 
money for a grubstake, always with the pros- 
pector's thought that sooner or later I should 
strike it rich. 

In 1915 I discovered a ledge not far from 
Mono Lake, California. "At last!" I thought. 
"At last!" 

The ledge had all the ear-marks of a mine. It 
was three feet across with perfect walls, dipping 
at an angle of forty-five degrees. The ore was 
free-milling, and although low grade on the sur- 
face it warranted work for depth to find rich 
values. 

I set about with a feeling of optimism that I 
had never before experienced. For three months 
I worked and starved. I had to pack my grub 
sixteen miles, and poor grub it was. Coffee and 
very little bacon, and beans. Boiled beans for 
breakfast, cold beans for lunch, and warmed- 
over beans for supper. Day in and day out. No 



260 OCEAN ECHOES 

one to speak to, no news, and no new thoughts. 
Only work. 

Sometimes I would get discouraged. Then I 
would look at the beautiful sugar-loaf quartz in 
the ledge, and my eye would catch a little glint 
of gold. That was all I needed, to go at it again. 

One morning I made up my mind to go away. 
I was a slave to a rainbow, and I knew it, and 
wanted to break away forever. I knew that if 
T ever did break away I should never return to 
this or any other mine unless in later years and 
sanely. 

But even then it is doubtful if my resolution 
would have held had it not been for the farmer. 
Fate surely brought him that very morning 
mounted on one horse, and leading another, with 
rifles slung across the saddles. 

"Have you a little time to spare?" he called, 
stopping at the mouth of my tunnel. 

"Yes," I answered. "All kinds of time." 

"Come along with me," he said. "Get on this 
horse, and take this rifle. Three Mexicans killed 
the sheriff this morning. We are out after them. 
Come on." 

Before I had time to more than snatch my coat 



FAIR PLAY 261 

we were off at a gallop down the mountain trail. 
I was never to see that mine again, and I suppose 
some other poor prospector got the benefit of my 
worn outfit: ragged blanket, blunt pick, beans, 
glittering hopes, and all. 



CHAPTER XXXI 
Killing Mexican Bandits 

FOR about three miles we rode silently, 
the farmer well in the lead, and I hold- 
ing to my horse as best I could, for he 
was anything but quiet. My mind was swirling 
as to what would be the outcome before the sun 
should go down. 

We reined up in a little meadow, where we 
were joined by four other horsemen, farmers also, 
one of them cross-eyed and carrying a Springfield 
rifle. I wondered how he could be useful on a 
man-hunt. How little use he was, was shown 
before the day was out, by the things he thought 
he saw, the times his gun nearly went off, and the 
one time that it did go off, when it was not his 
fault that no one was hurt. 

"We're on their trail, boys," he shouted. 
"All we have to do is to keep after them." Then 
he went on to tell how they had broken into a 

262 



KILLING MEXICAN BANDITS 263 

store and stolen arms, including a Savage rifle, 
which he had been told could kill a man at a dis- 
tance of two miles. And that these murdering 
Mexicans were Pancho Villa's soldiers, revolu- 
tionists, who had crossed the line into California. 
We scoured the hills, and about four o'clock 
came on them where they lay behind some fallen 
timber. They were full of fight, and opened fire 
on us without warning. The first shot killed 
the horse upon which I was riding, the second 
took a sliver out of the cross-eyed farmer's chin — 
which was a pity, in that it hurt him, but un- 
doubtedly a blessing in that it took his mind off 
his gun. 

It seemed that we were to be at the mercy of 
the Mexicans. Everything was in their favour, 
with us in the open and no shelter within reach. 
But it so happened that two of our posse were 
Spanish-American War veterans, and good shots, 
whose presence saved me, at least, to write this 
story. The moment that one of the "hombres" 
raised his head above the fallen timber to shoot 
again, one of the soldiers silenced him for all 
time; and so it went with the second and the 
third, without further casualty to us. 



264 OCEAN ECHOES 

We tied them onto saddles and packed them 
to the coroner, who received ten dollars from the 
county for pronouncing them dead. The road- 
house at the head of Mono Lake, where the 
sheriff had been killed, was crowded with people 
waiting for news of the desperadoes. 

Farmers' wives whose dear ones had joined in 
the hunt were there, anxious for news of their 
husbands; sweethearts of the dead sheriff hung 
around the corpse with wet eyes; the old widow 
whose house, barn, and stacks of hay the Mexi- 
cans had burned was there too, and wailing her 
loss. 

Altogether it seemed a fine chance to the prose- 
cuting attorney to square himself with the pub- 
lic forever; so he ordered drinks for the crowd, 
and addressed them imposingly, telling them 
everything they already knew, to their great 
interest. 

Nevertheless, when the oration was over, and 
the dead sheriff had received more homage than 
ever he had had in life, and the Mexicans had 
been sufficiently reviled, I emerged into the open 
air thoughtfully. 

It was the farmers I was thinking of, and their 



KILLING MEXICAN BANDITS 265 

courage, going off that morning of their own 
accord, leaving their wives and children, their 
stock and growing crops, to which they might 
never return, to do duty out there ; the duty that 
all right-thinking men owe to civilization — the 
performance of the laws of justice, derived from 
usage of the ages. 



/ 



CHAPTER XXXII 

One Who Sang 

A S I walked along that September night 
yLA thinking of the good and the bad that 
■** -^ is in all of us I heard away off in the 
distance the sound of a banjo. It seemed cheer- 
ful in view of the sadness I had just left, and I 
turned towards it, walking along the lake. 

Now the sound became plainer, and I could 
hear a man's voice, old and cracked, singing an 
ancient rebel song: 

"When first I joined the army 

My mother said to me, 
'Come back, you red-headed son-of-a-gun 
And brand the brindle-steer.' " 
Words and music came back to me, re-echoed 
from a small island in the lake, and I followed 
them to the smudge of a fire where the old 
man sat. 

Two youngsters were sitting with him, and he 

266 



ONE WHO SANG 267 

was entertaining them, more, it seemed, for the 
love of his song, than for the sake of their 
proffered bottle. 

They made me welcome, and the old man con- 
tinued his songs. He had a violin with which 
he alternated the banjo. Then he would tell 
stories about all sorts of things, for he had had 
a queer and roving life. He had been, it seemed, 
a traveling circus man for years and years, and 
able to do a little something anywhere he might 
be needed. 

The young men went off somewhere when they 
had heard enough, and I was about to start 
away, being drawn by a cat-like feeling for the 
little camp. I turned to say good-by to the old 
man. 

"Where do you sleep?" I asked. 

"Oh," he answered, "I sleep here in the brush. 
That is, when I can find my blankets." 

"Do you always go to bed drunk?" I asked, 
laughing. 

The old fellow fell to sobbing, and I, thinking 
that he was none too sober then, was about to 
turn away, when he cried : 

"No, I don't go to bed drunk. I am almost 



268 OCEAN ECHOES 

blind. I'm hard put upon once the sun sets. 
When he shines in the sky I'm all right." 

It was my part now to show him sympathy, 
and I questioned him. He told me that he sang, 
fiddled, and played the banjo for the food and 
the few dimes the people gave him. 

"No one will give me work any more. They 
don't want me. Why should they? I'm of no 
use in the world. I should die damn it! Yes, 
I should die. But" — for his pessimism, never too 
strong, had run itself out — "I could work, I 
know I could. I'm a tough old geezer yet." 

I gathered wood and rekindled the fire, and he 
and I talked until Mars lit up the dawn sky. It 
was a strange thing, meeting this old man, and 
it had far-reaching consequences for me and for 
others who didn't know me any better than the 
loons who cawed on Mono Lake. 

At any rate, I was moved that night as I 
had never been moved before, perhaps by the 
stories of his youth which raised in me memories 
of my own ; perhaps by the aged helplessness of 
him, which suggested that duty whose fulfil- 
ment had been stopped by my mother's death. 
I almost thought that some unseen power was 



ONE WHO SANG 269 

bidding me take charge of him, so blind and help- 
less, and at the mercy of the passers-by. 

When daylight came I saw his eyes. Pitiful 
they were, like those of a blind dog, with sagging 
under-lids, and a lifeless look. But one was a 
little better than the other, and I felt that for 
that one there was hope, could I but get him 
to a doctor. 



CHAPTER XXXIII 

Old Austen Sees Daylight, I Do, Too, and 
She Does, Too 

T was four hundred miles to an eye special- 
ist, eighty to the railroad, and I had nine- 
teen dollars in my pocket. Nevertheless, I 
made the first move by hiring a horse from a 
farmer for ten dollars and the promise to send 
him back from Bishop. 

I launched the old man — Austen was his name, 
and seemed to be all the name he had — upon him, 
with a blanket over the horse's bare back, and 
the banjo and violin tucked each under an arm. 

They laughed at us as we passed the hotel 
where the sheriff's funeral was about to take up, 
and we laughed back ; Austen because he laughed 
at himself as much as anyone could laugh at 
him, and I because the air was sweet, and I had 
something different to do, and someone else than 
myself to plan for. So we jogged off through 
the desert, and the dust got into our throats, and 

270 



OLD AUSTEN SEES DAYLIGHT 271 

the coyotes howled at us, and still the sun shone 
and the firelight sparkled, and we laughed. 

Four days we marched, stopping for coffee, 
and Van Camp's pork and beans, and the oats 
which I carried on my back for the horse. It 
was a bit hard on the old man going down the 
steep hills — going up he didn't mind — and he 
was constantly surging forward onto the horse's 
neck, damning him for not holding his head up. 

On the afternoon of the fourth day we came 
to Bishop, and I hunted the town to get up a 
subscription to send the old man to Los Angeles. 
Heartless the people there seemed, and heartless 
they were. They were certainly not interested 
in blind men, and urged me to send him to the 
poor farm, if I could manage to get him in. 

I arranged with a cattle man to take the horse 
back to Mono Lake, and after a night in the 
town and a real feed, we set out on towards 
Death Valley, where I knew that I could get 
work to keep us both, and eventually to send 
Austen to Los Angeles. 

We walked about eight miles that morning. 
The old fellow was getting tired, and we sat 
down to rest. On the slope of the hill, less than 



272 OCEAN ECHOES 

a mile away, stood a modern farm house, dif- 
ferent from any other else in the valley. The 
road up to it was graded and wide; young trees 
lined in uniform growth stood at the sides; in 
the fields alfalfa grew, and beautiful Percheron 
mares were runnin^ and playing with their 
stocky colts. Jersey cows with fawn-like limbs 
nibbled at the grass. And an old Indian, tall 
and noble-looking, stood, like a statue, with a 
shovel in his hands, watching the tiny irriga- 
tion-ditches which, if untended, were so tricky 
with the unset soil of that country. 

A white mongrel dog who was out chasing rab- 
bits saw us, and ran to us, barking and wagging 
his tail. I patted him, and he licked the old 
man's hands; then barking again in his friendly 
way he ran into his home-road and stood, with 
head over his shoulder, as if urging us to come. 

"That dog is our first friend in five days, 
Austen," said I, "and I'll bet that his master 
is kind and considerate too. Let us go up." 

We did go, and we found a child of four or 
five years playing on the lawn, and a woman in 
her early thirties unharnessing a horse. 

"Let me do that," said I, quite naturally. 



OLD AUSTEN SEES DAYLIGHT 273 

"You don't look as if you knew how," said she, 
wickedly. 

Of course I knew how, and I took matters into 
my own hands at once. "Where does the harness 
go?" I asked, paying no attention. "First door 
to the right as you go into the barn, horse in the 
last stall, halter hanging on the iron hook," said 
she, walking off quite unconcernedly, but, I 
noticed, with a twinkling eye. 

"Frances," she called to the child, "come here 
and show this man how to feed Slim, and water 
him." 

The child came fearlessly, and I, who thought 
it was a joke, found it was no joke at all. Sev- 
eral work-horses were in the barn, finishing their 
dinner, and the little girl told me all about them, 
their names, and how they were fed. 

We came out from the barn hand in hand — 
and although she is now almost as tall as I, she 
still gives me my orders when she sees fit. 

The mother was standing talking to Austen, 
and I saw already that she was in full possession 
of her facts. As I looked at her I thought that 
she was aged for her years ; that her strong frame 



274 OCEAN ECHOES 

was accustoming itself to work it had not been 
used to, and that the serious face which belied 
the smiling eye, hid a considerable knowledge of 
loneliness and misery at first hand. 

Later I found that this was true; that she 
had had a life as changeable, as full of adven- 
ture, and disappointment for her, as mine had 
been for me. That now she was hanging to this 
ranch, which she had been forced to mortgage 
heavily, in the forlorn hope of selling it at a time 
when the war had driven value out of land every- 
where. People were keeping their cash, not 
knowing what would happen, and she felt that 
if she could not sell she must leave the place she 
had redeemed from the desert, and start another 
trail. 

Partly dependent as she was — for she was a 
"remittance-man" — she could not oblige herself 
to lose the free feel of the desert in any provided 
shelter. So, I being lonely too, and without pre- 
tense and as we understood each other, we 
agreed some months later to be married; and 
were eventually married, to our satisfaction, but 
not without trouble, which began to brew that 
night at Mono Lake. 



OLD AUSTEN SEES DAYLIGHT 275 

While she fed us — and it seemed that we could 
never stop eating of ranch food that was really 
fit for workingmen — she talked to us, and we 
consulted about Austen's eyes. She seemed at 
once to feel that it was as much her responsibility 
as it was his, or mine. 

"I can give him work about the house for a 
while," she said, "until we can arrange for the 
doctor in Los Angeles. That part of it I will 
answer for, if you will take him down there. 
When he gets through, I will let him irrigate for 
a month, to give him some money to go away 
with. More than that I cannot promise, for I 
expect to rent the ranch this winter, and move 
away." 

"You are the trouble for me," she continued; 
"for you are a sailor and an Irishman, and I 
never hire sailors nor Irishmen. Sailors always 
want their own way, and Irishmen are here one 
minute and get angry and leave the next." 

I thought it better to dispute the premise than 
to argue the conclusion, which seemed to be 
based on experience, and was certainly the truth ; 
so I denied that I was either a sailor or an Irish- 
mac 



276 OCEAN ECHOES 

"I didn't suppose you'd admit it," she said, 
speculatively. "They never do. But you are 
both. I know you are a sailor because you walk 
like one, and always will; and an Irishman 
because that is written all over you." 

In vain I protested, wretchedly, too ; for I saw 
that she meant what she said. I told her what 
I could do, and how well I could do it. I prom- 
ised that the best man she had should never 
be able to set a pace for me. Finally tears came 
into my eyes, and a lump into my throat. Just 
then I saw the little girl, standing by. 

"You tell her," I said, huskily, and that set- 
tled it. 

I do believe that for a month I worked as I 
had never worked before, and I must say that I 
was driven without mercy. But I was well fed, 
and had a little house to myself; and the child, 
at least when she was not busy with Austen, who 
fascinated her completely, was kind to me. 

My month was up, and it was pay-day. I was 
called into the house and the little girl told me 
that her mother was going to Bishop, and wanted 
me to go with her. 

We went in the mountain-wagon, the child on 



OLD AUSTEN SEES DAYLIGHT 277 

my knees, her mother doing the driving; for 
which, I may say, to this day she is badly lacking 
in confidence in me. She told me, when she 
started, that she was going to take me to buy a 
few things, because she had arranged for Austen 
to go down to the hospital the next day, and for 
me to go and stay there with him. 

I looked down at my worn boots, for I had 
been grubbing sage-brush and digging ditches. 

"Yes, I know," she said, catching the look. 
"We are going to get them." 

The thought of anyone going to help me buy 
my shoes, who had had no one to take a single 
thought for me for so long, moved me so that 
I could hardly speak. We did go to buy them. 
We bought other things for Austen, had our pay 
besides, and started south on the train next day. 
She told me as we were going that she had sold 
a cow to make sure that she could send us ! 

At the hospital I found plenty to do with the 
old man. I held his hand while Dr. McCoy 
operated, stitching up the "curtain of film, not 
a cataract," as he described it, to either eyelid, 
and cheering him through the dismal days that 
followed. 



278 OCEAN ECHOES 

Five days later the doctor took the poor old 
man's bandages off, and he nearly went wild. 
He could see perfectly with one eye, and almost 
as well with the other. He shouted and sang, 
and kissed the nurses. He was the circus man 
of the sixties again, and the "Brindle Steer" rang 
out, until he was stifled by an angry attendant. 

The doctor would not take a cent for the opera- 
tion. He was one of God's creatures, too. 



CHAPTER XXXIV 
Far-Reaching Consequences 

A HAPPY greeting Austen and I got when 
we got back to the ranch. The lady's 
cow money seemed to have given her 
happiness in the joy brought to that old man, joy 
in having sight of the valleys, the green grass, 
and the mountain streams, and to look at his 
banjo and really see its strings. 

That night in the sitting-room before the fire, 
he sang us songs of other days, of the musket and 
the broadsword, and his old young voice showed 
his happiness. He wound up in fine form with: 

"When first I joined the army, 
My mother said to me." 
Then: 

"Come back, you red-headed — " 

But here he broke down, and cried as he cried 
that first night, for the very opposite reason. 

279 



280 OCEAN ECHOES 

Austen was given a house to live in, and work 
to do to start him on his way to the remnant of 
a relation whom he still had in the East. 

I did not linger on. I told her that I was 
going, that my mind was made up. Either she 
should marry me at Christmas in Los Angeles, 
where I was going to look for work, or I should 
never see her again. And right there, because 
she said she would marry me, did the vicious 
chain of consequences to which I have alluded 
before, begin to show themselves. 

I went to Los Angeles, getting into touch with 
what seemed to be an excellent mining proposi- 
tion, a new town, which afterward failed at the 
threat of impending war. At Thanksgiving I 
returned to the ranch for a few days and found 
that she had written to her father, and received 
his reply. I was a fortune-hunter, and an 
"impossible person." 

Once there was a cobbler in Michigan. He 
made a standard shoe that stood the test of time, 
and he had made standard shoes for many years. 
One day he was working on a pair, when the mail 
brought him a letter from his brother in Califor- 
nia asking him for money. He was so disturbed 



FAR-REACHING CONSEQUENCES 281 

by the letter, that his mind wandered from the 
shoes, and a little variation in one shoe occurred. 
A customer in New York who always bought 
these shoes happened a little later to be in need 
of a pair. He bought the very shoes that the 
cobbler had made when he received his brother's 
letter. 

He wore them out on a rainy day. They were 
not quite stout, owing to the defect in one of 
them, and the water leaked in and gave the man 
pneumonia. When he was recovering, his wife 
asked him to hang a picture, and he got upon a 
chair to do it. The shoe had never quite 
regained its shape, like the other shoe, his foot 
turned in it, he was thrown to the ground and 
broke his leg. So did the cobbler's brother in 
California affect the purchaser in New York. 

So did my impulsive sacrifice for Austen cause 
the utmost disturbance thousands of miles away, 
to which even broken bones would have been 
preferable. 

How was I, who had always worked hard and 
never valued money, going to prove that the pros- 
pects of this lonely lady and her people were of 
no interest to me? Or that, although I had no 



282 OCEAN ECHOES 

money, I had some valuable assets of experience, 
and honesty and heart? It simply couldn't be 
done. 

So, when a member of the family appeared 
with a written questionnaire, what could I do 
but answer him as I did? I said : 

"I shall not answer these questions. If you 
want to look me up, here are the addresses of 
my enemies. Go to them, for my friends will not 
interest you." 

Surely enough he did, and heard the worst of 
me, and much that wasn't true, and my Lady 
must needs pay her price, too, for the rescue of 
a blind man and the sale of a cow! 

We had rather a tumultuous two years, from 
which we emerged with great faith in each other, 
and little in those who would have kept us apart. 
That was while the war was at its height ; small 
passions mounted into great ones everywhere, 
and many small fry perished. 

April 12, 1917, we took a street-car from Los 
Angeles to Santa Ana, and were there married 
by a justice of the peace, whose witnesses were 
vital to us but for an instant, and then passed 
forever from our lives. 



THE LAST CHAPTER 
Ocean Echoes 

WE had come into the war now, and as 
anxious as I was to do something to 
help, I found little encouragement in 
the West. Wherever I made application, the 
response was : "Wait, wait, don't be in a hurry." 
The same thing had happened to me in 1898. 
I left a ship then and trained for our war with 
Spain three months at my own expense, only to 
be told that Uncle Sam had more volunteers than 
he could use. 

This time the excitement grew upon me so 
strongly that I decided I would get at least three 
thousand miles nearer; and in May, 1918, we 
left a little place we had rented, and my wife 
started for New York. There I joined her a 
month later, and went right to work as Super- 
intendent of Deck Rigging in the Port Newark 
Shipyard, while she worked in an ammunition 
plant. 

283 



284 OCEAN ECHOES 

It seemed that Old Ocean was once more tak- 
ing care of me. I was at home with masts and 
booms, anchors and cables, life-boats, steering 
gear and compasses. I worked there until the 
next summer. 

Then came a period of idleness, waiting for 
another position, and I did a good deal of read- 
ing. Stories of the sea, some were. I criticized 
them to myself. Those writers who really knew 
the sea seemed to be self-conscious, sometimes; 
to think that they must use the ocean as scenery 
to decorate their plot. Those who did not know 
the sea, seemed to want to take awful chances 
with the truth. Then I got hold of the 
"Trawler," and it got hold of me. Why shouldn't 
I try to write? I thought. I had things to say 
and no one would sneer at the simplicity of an 
old sailor. 

I wrote my first book; and the critics re- 
ceived "The Flying Bo'sun" kindly. They said 
the most heartening thing — that it rang true. 
We can't all visualize the colors on the horizon, 
and some of the things that have happened to 
me may seem impossible to a reader. But when 
we fall a-yarning it is hard to stop, and we 



OCEAN ECHOES 285 

like our listeners to be awake and calling 
"Bravo" at the end. 

So this tale is drawing to its close, and I must 
not drift, but drop my anchor where the holding- 
ground is good, and enter my ship in her port of 
discharge. 

In the summer of 1921 I went to sea again, not 
as a sailor before the mast this time, nor as a 
mate, nor a master, but as a passenger bound for 
South America. When the Ambrose Channel 
was cleared, and the old Scotland Light-ship bore 
away on the starboard beam I felt the motion of 
the Sea of my youth. As the land faded away, 
and the sky and sea closed in around me, a sad- 
ness came over me. Something was wrong, some- 
thing different from other times. 

It wasn't like being at sea at all. There wasn't 
a roll out of the ship, the black smoke that 
belched out of the smoke-stacks seemed unreal, 
the bulwarks were far away above the floating 
water. There were no clanks from blocks nor 
flop of sails, no running to and fro of naked feet. 
All that reminded me of the old days were the 
ship's bells. Their tone was the same, and faith- 



286 OCEAN ECHOES 

fully to their age-long responsibility, they chimed 
the pure Time of the Sun. 

As we wore away south, familiar things 
showed up again. The blackfin shark still 
prowled across the ocean's surface ; there was the 
dolphin and the flying-fish, the whale and his 
enemy the thrasher. Porpoises still played 
around the bows. 

The clouds still had their old-time glow, the 
sunsets fired the skies as in other days. The 
night skies, it seemed to me, were more beauti- 
ful. Old, familiar friends I could see up there, 
almost always clear of clouds, the Southern 
Cross, with its two pilot stars pointing to it 
sparkling with beauty brighter than all the rest 
of that starry field. 

One night when the noisy passengers had gone 
to their bunks to sleep, I went forward to the 
forecastle head, up to the eyes of her, where I 
could see out upon the ocean unobstructed. I 
was alone there, everything mortal was behind 
me. A gentle breeze blew across the bows. So 
cool and soothing it felt! I was not conscious 
of the steamer I was on. I felt the influence of 
the years that were back of me. 



OCEAN ECHOES 287 

As I stood there holding the jack-pole, gazing 
out into the bright night, ships, misty yet not 
dim, sailing-ships of every sort, with every sort 
of canvas, sailed up from the lee. They had 
memories' sails bellied out to the wind. I knew 
them all, one after the other, their hulls, black 
or white, their rigs, their painted ports. Of 
course I knew them, and their scars and the 
queer things about them, and called them each 
by name. 

How fiery the water looked as it dashed over 
their bows, how gracefully they rode with the lee- 
rail low! Ships, real ships, the ships of other 
years ! 

I was startled by a voice beside me: 

"So you are up here, are you?" 

"Yes, Captain," I replied absently, for I knew 
I had to let them go. 

"You are not the only one," he said ; "there are 
nights that I, too, come up here to watch the old 
ships go sailing by. The lookout in the crow's- 
nest up there never reports them. He doesn't 
see them. He is a modern sailor and has only 
eyes for smoke." 

THE END 



